Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
by G0REL0RD
Summary: Novelization of the game.
1. Chapter 1: The Silenced Cathedral

**Author's note: **_Greetings to everyone viewing my story! This is my first ever work that I'm posting on this site and also the first ever work that I'm writing in English (it's not my first language), so, please, don't be too strict with me) But nevertheless all kinds of feedback are more than welcome, so feel free to express all your thoughts and ideas, including critical ones - it's very important for the progress of my story and for me personally._

_Those of you who are familiar with the original plot of the "Soul Reaver" might be wondering now why my fic begins with the chapter "The Silenced Cathedral", and though I've already explained that in my profile info, I will reiterate it here one more time: I have the earlier chapters of this story already written too, but since it took me a while to sharpen my writing skill, I find what I was writing in the beginning a bit 'raw' now and would like to firstly edit them before putting here. Therefore I'm currently uploading the part depicting Raziel's quest for Zephon and everything that happened afterwards in accordance with the classic storyline, since I consider this part to be the best I've managed to come up with so far. The chapters portraying earlier events of the story will certainly be uploaded by me as well, only a bit later, cuz as I've already said I now feel compelled to make some serious 'amendments' to them._

_And one more thing: while writing my fic I tried to stick to the original plot of the game as much as possible and whenever admissible keep all the facts and details, but as you have to understand, some things that we see in the game just cannot remain in the novelization for the sake of its logic and consistency. Because of that I had purposely changed some details or added some new ones so as not to harm the literary quality of the story. I hope that all true "LoK"-fans will sympathize with such decision of mine and will not hate me for 'trenching upon what is sacred')))_

_And just as the common cliché goes I can't help but say: please, read & review! It really IS important for me. _

_Thank you for your attention and now onward with the story, _

* * *

**The Silenced Cathedral**

In the short run I emerged from the caverns and finally reached the ruins that greeted my exit from the Underworld.

The sun, although hardly discernable through the thick veil of smoke, rose feebly high above the horizon just as it did when I was leaving the territory of the Sanctuary of the Clans.

If my sense of time was more or less precise then I must have spent only one day and one night traveling here, which was rather fast for such a considerable distance.

I took a view of the scenery and again glanced to the side of the grotto through which I left the Elder's keep at the beginning of my quest. Even though I had already noticed then that the entrance to it did not exist in the material world this externality was still marvel to me. I remembered the humans to have a saying like 'things are not always what they seem to be'. It was very unlikely, however, that the authors of this phrase could even hardly imagine how close they got to the absolute truth in their philosophical edifying. But unlike the representatives of both human and vampire races I was an infrequently rare inhabitant of this world, who had the privilege of witnessing both astral and material realms and even comparing all the differences. I wondered if the Elder God was somehow responsible for some of those incongruities, for this particular one clearly evidenced his careful attempt to conceal his presence from all Nosgoth's dwellers.

The eastern mountains were about fifty feet away from me, so I made for them, following the direction of my protector. Mountains as a whole covered about two thirds of Nosgoth's surface, but the eastern part was undoubtedly the most highland. Climbing these sublime ridges was nearly infeasible, but I strongly suspected that there had to be some passage at their bottom, otherwise the territories of the east would be practically inaccessible.

My intuition did not fail me, and soon I found one right beneath the cliff - almost imperceptible on the dark rocky background, but rather wide and capacious.

I walked into the passage and saw that it was blocked with a huge set of iron gates – an essential obstacle on the face of it, but not for a creature with abilities like mine. So I transferred myself to the spectral realm and swimmingly leaked through the bars, again making use of the Dark Gift that once belonged to my brother Melchiah.

As the barrier was left behind me I continued my way through the passage.

Despite attaining such a great height the mountain that I was passing now turned out to be not as vast as it seemed to me at the first gaze, for it took me only a couple of minutes to cross this tunnel that reached all the way through it.

As I stepped out of the passage I beheld a broad coastal area spreading miles away to the east. Although my vision was a bit distorted by the blurry haze of the spirit world, I could still discern the sweeping watery waste ranging beyond the slender rocky coast on which I was standing now.

I approached the shore-side and peered into the water space underneath me, which in this realm was as thin and transparent as air. The pool had a rather shallow depth, about thirty feet at most, and everything on its bottom was perfectly visible.

There I got the sight of three sluagh, walking on the pool's ground like some sea creatures and voraciously devouring the lost souls that were flying around them. Watching them under an insubstantial prism of liquid felt like watching fishes in an aquarium, and the moment I arrived at that idea made me chuckle aloud.

But then this feeling of amusement was quickly replaced with appropriate ruefulness and disgust, for once again I comprehended how pathetic in fact was this afterlife that awaited every living being post obitum – not heaven, not even hell, but just some lifeless phantom purgatory, where your spirit was either to be gobbled by some retarded spectral parasite or was to devolve into one. The Elder God had told me earlier that the souls were getting trapped in this realm because of the vampires' immortality that had disrupted the balance of life and death, but I still doubted whether the vampires' mere existence could have alone created such a terrific antinomy. Instead I had a theory that this phenomenon had rather something to do with the corruption of the Pillars of Nosgoth and the balance they could no longer sustain. But as ever I had no facts proving me wrong or right, so I could only hope that my further adventures would cast some light on my suspicions.

I shifted my glance from the water and swept it over the shore until I got the view of some tall building rising out of the pool in the distance. Through the misty brume of the spirit world it looked like another impenetrably black mountain, but as I continued to walk along the coast toward it, its constructive features started becoming more discernable.

The edifice had a towering cone-shaped form which made it look so hill-alike from afar and its east wing was built attached to the nearest cliff. Those sides of the structure which were not covered by the rocks were surrounded by a moat formed by a waterfall flowing from the top of the cliff, which flooded the whole area beyond the coast. Such an untypical location could only be explained by protective purposes.

The building itself consisted of about four or five tiers, each one tapering from the bottom upwards. This type of design seemed very familiar to me and I was gradually beginning to suspect that I had already seen such piece of architecture before.

The construction of this sort could only pertain to Nosgoth's churches… or cathedrals.

At last it flashed upon me where I could have seen this building. For this edifice before my eyes was much more than just a simple towering cathedral – it was a legendary fortress, created centuries ago by the mankind as a testament to their defiance of Kain's empire. Aside from being an excellent defensive post this tower was deliberately conceived by the human architects to become a holy weapon against the vampire menace. The cathedral had large acoustic pipes concealed in its fundament that were spreading throughout the whole construction's height and jutting outward from its walls. If the pipes' internal stacks were connected accurately within the same tier they could amplify any sound coming from there a thousand times. And since vampires also had a subtle, but cogent vulnerability to the sound, it made the cathedral to be one of the few human inventions that could pose true danger to the members of my former race.

So this must have been the exact place where my omnipresent protector had directed me to. Of course, it was not the only cathedral located in the east, but its remarkable design and inimitable height left me no room for the doubt that it was the very structure I assumed it to be.

I again ranged my eyes over the cyclopean-high building in front of me, which tip almost pierced the skies above, and it reassured me in my supposal.

The Elder God told me that the cathedral was taken over by my brother Zephon and his clan who killed its human guardians and made the structure into their lair. I remembered Kain to have been planning an assault on this fortress shortly before my execution, for he too was concerned with the destructive potential of the cathedral. And it was surprising that Kain granted such an important task to Zephon, the second weakest of our brood after Melchiah.

Although now I had to admit that the Zephonim had done their job more than well, ensuring that the human weapon of annihilation remained silent. Now the most irony about this was that all the vampires of Nosgoth owed their lives to my brother, for only God knew how far the deadly hymn could have spread from the cathedral's pipes had the humans managed to use them.

I walked several more steps by the front side of the cathedral, observing its exterior façade. Two grey flags that carried the symbol of the Zephonim clan were hung above the entrance to the building like an illustration of their victory over its former human occupiers. The bridge to the entrance was down, and it seemed strange to me that the Zephonim did not lift it in order to minimize the possibility of any undesirable intrusion. The front door, however, looked as if sealed, but I could only be sure about that in the material realm.

I took a fleeting look around and spotted a conduit flaring right by the waterfall that filled the moat around the building. Wasting no time, I promptly made a movement toward it.

After re-entering the world of the living it had become much easier for me to orient myself on this rocky terrain. The mountains around no longer seemed so dark as how they did in the spectral realm and the details of the whole landscape were now much more distinct.

I strode back to the bridge over the moat, intent upon crossing it straightway, but then my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of some tiny light speck gleaming behind my left shoulder. I turned around and got the sight of a huge passage between the two shore-side mountains, which I failed to discern earlier due to the obscurity of the spirit world. Unlike the artificially created passage I crossed to get here this one must have formed in a more natural way, perhaps as a result of rock decay.

And at the end of this pass-way in the distance of about half mile I distinguished a miniscule view of a burning bonfire.

I could hardly imagine someone to be dislocating in this arduously accessible part of Nosgoth, and, furthermore, in such a perilous closeness to the Zephonim's cloister. But nonetheless I knew too well that where there was bonfire, there had to be someone around who had kindled it.

This spectacle was very befuddling and though my main goal lay within the cathedral's walls, I could not resist my curiosity and suspiciousness to go explore this place. So instead of getting across the bridge I redirected myself to this cragged passage.

Before passing the crevice between the mountains I stopped dead and looked at my right arm.

The wraith blade…

I had almost forgotten that it was flaring as bright as this bonfire that I was approaching now.

I had to dispose of it temporarily if I didn't want to be descried while checking this area. And the only way to do this was to get injured anywise.

I unclenched the talons on my left hand and slackly clawed the thin coat of flesh on my right arm. A tiny drop of blue blood exuded from the little scratch, but this was enough to diffract the Reaver's projection from my arm, driving it into somewhere inside me.

Once more I felt my body losing its refreshing stability and my soul hunger awaking with renewed vigour. But since the sword had been maintaining me up until now, I knew that my energy would suffice for several more hours.

Without the Reaver summoned I continued to move toward the bonfire area, gradually slowing down my walk as I was getting closer to it.

When I had about twenty yards left between me and the fire place, I made out a silhouette of some figure standing in the bright shine of the burning wood. I quickly leaned unto the side of the mountain, sheltering myself behind the snouts of the rock.

As I made sure that I had not been revealed, I cautiously peered out of the exposed cliffs.

Then I saw that the stranger by the bonfire was a vampire hunter - a tall warrior mailed in heavy black armor and armed with a crossbow. His vestment was identical to the one I had seen on a vampire huntress Enya who had accompanied me to the territory of the Necropolis. Since the warrior's face was covered by a helmet and he even had the same weapon she did, one could easily confuse these two if it was not for the salient stalwart features of his body that could only belong to a male human. Evidently he and Enya were the members of the same war host in the human army and thence their garment was nearly equal.

In a short time I stopped examining the hunter's visage and shifted my gaze to the area behind him. There were several tents standing in the rear of the fire place, but I could not be exact about their number because of the poor visibility – this place was so much smothered with cliffs that the weak sunlight as it was hardly reached here.

So this was some sort of a staging post that the human warriors had here. The terrain itself, however, was a very unlikely one for the vampire hunters to set up their camp on.

And yet for some reason they did.

Perhaps they were planning to storm the cathedral and dislodge the Zephonim that had invaded it, but I couldn't know this for sure and wanted to make it clear.

Suddenly some fuss near one of the tents came into my view.

I did a double take and saw another human indolently getting out of the closest to the fire place tent. This one was stripped to waist, having only his chausses on. He was not wearing any helmet either, so his bald head remained exposed.

Even in such a gloom I could discern that the man's well-built torso was all sweaty, while his arms were blooded almost up to elbows.

The human took a cloth out of his sheathe and slovenly wiped his hands, then started walking toward the sentinel hunter.

The guarding arbalester drowsily turned his helmeted head to the approaching human and lowered his crossbow a bit.

"How are they?" the armored hunter asked.

"I've stanched their wounds – luckily they are not fatal." the man with a naked torso replied and flicked away the sweat from his forehead. "But almost all the warriors have their nerve-endings injured. Now they are literally paralyzed. I don't know how long it will take them to recover."

The crossbowman shook his head in disapproval.

"I knew that assailing the cathedral was a bad idea…" he said with a mixture of fatefulness and anger in his voice.

"And you have any better ideas?" the human that appeared to be some kind of a healer asked him with reprimand. "The cathedral is our only hope of getting the upper hand over this vampire plague! Or do you want to continue living under their flagitious bondage?"

"I just don't want our people to be fecklessly thrown into every misbegotten combat like pieces of meat into a chopper!" the guardian's tone sounded almost like an accusation. "How can you expect us to get the upper hand over them if we cannot even bring our siege weapons to this place? As long as these creatures have such a positional superiority we will never be able to get even close to the cathedral!"

The bald-headed human raised his finger for an objection but then stopped as if having changed his mind.

"You know exactly that I am not the one who gives orders here." he said in a more measured manner. "But the longer we wait the greater the numbers of these beasts keep growing and the lesser are our chances of taking back the cathedral."

The arbalester turned his head away and grabbed his crossbow a bit tighter.

"If only these beasts were our only problem now…" he murmured angrily. "These goddamn traitors…"

"You mean the vampire worshippers?" the healer asked him. "They're just headless lunatics. Think that wheedling those ghouls will spare their pathetic lives."

"Lunatics or not, but they have slaughtered our squadrons not less than these beasts did." the guard responded. "I've seen some of these bastards before, and they seemed to be more devoted to the vampires than the ones of their own kind themselves. Whatever truly guides them – their faith or their fear – what they do they do completely willfully."

The healer knitted his brows together, probably thinking over what his fellow hunter had told him, but didn't say anything in reply.

For a second or two the humans were silent, but then the one with the naked torso started another subject.

"What are we going to do now?" he asked.

"Wait for the reinforcements to come, then bring all the wounded back to the Citadel." the crossbowman answered stiffly.

"And what about the others? Those whom we left inside the cathedral?" the healer's question sounded as an imploration.

"It is too late for them…" the armored hunter declared with an understandable note of resignation.

The healer cast a hopeless glance in the direction of the crossbowman, but again didn't reply anything and just speechlessly made for another tent, while the guarding hunter remained standing at his watch.

When it became clear that the conversation between these two was not to continue I prudently sneaked back behind the cliffs and made my way out of this place.

* * *

My speculation was not that far from the truth: not only were the humans _planning_ to storm the cathedral – they had already attempted to do this once, but unfortunately for them my brother's clan had prevailed in that collision.

It appeared that my arrival here had taken place accurately after the hunters' assault on the Zephonim, which was hardly a mere coincidence, for there had already been too many of them.

Anyway I had long since grown accustomed to the fact that my resurrection was not just a contingency and everything that was now happening in Nosgoth had to have some connection with my presence here.

But what had provoked my interest even more were those vampire worshippers that these hunters were talking about. The crossbowman said that they were humans who willingly served the vampires.

But why would they do this?

Of course, vampire clans had thousands of humans enslaved throughout the land, but those were captives and not some willful worshippers.

Before now I had only once in my life heard about humans worshipping a vampire as their Master. Those were the servants of the ancient vampire Vorador who used to be the Father of the whole vampire race before Kain became the Emperor of Nosgoth. But Vorador was a noble and respectable vampire unlike my brethren and their offspring, who had devolved into a bunch of insensate crippled monsters. Even if those human renegades thought that caving in to the vampire oppression would make a better chance for their survival it was still very strange for them to act in such a way.

Soon I returned to the territory of the cathedral and this time headed straight up to its entrance.

I crossed the bridge over the moat and came nigh unto the front door, which turned out to be sealed almost pressure-tight just as I presumed earlier in the spectral realm.

When I failed to open the door by force, I took a few steps backwards and tried to visually examine it, looking for any hint that could help me unlock it.

In the center of the door I discerned a tiny aperture like that of a lock with some strange blue energy pouring of it. The color of this energy looked similar to the blue flame of the wraith blade, which gave me a feeling of perplexity.

I glanced closer at the door one more time and sighted two scarcely traceable emblems of the Soul Reaver graven symmetrically on each side of it. I had no idea why or how the Reaver's effigy appeared on the door to the cathedral, but I was beginning to think that I knew what my next move should be.

But first I had to feed to sate my fervid soul hunger and restore the blade's material form.

In order to do this I abandoned my physical body and took a dip into the spirit world.

Once I re-joined the world of the dead, I instantly jumped into the pervious water space of the moat around the cathedral.

After landing on the lake's bottom I ran to the western side of the lake. I was hoping to meet there those sluagh that I was recently watching from above the shore, for I knew that their unintelligent souls would easily replenish the surplus of my energy and help me return to the material realm with full health and the Reaver in its physical form.

While running I noticed that the cathedral's fundament was built literally sunken into the lake bed, which was very unusual even from the protective point of view. Never before had I ever seen a building in Nosgoth with such a construction style, and something was telling me that the idea of defense was not the only one behind this finding of human architects.

Upon getting round the western wing of the cathedral I found my way to the broad band of the lake.

The same three sluagh that I was after were still there busy devouring the lost souls that were fussing around them through the unrespirable air of the spectral realm. For some reason the straying spirits were gathering heavily exactly in this particular area, so these vermin were lucky to have discovered such a stable influx of 'food'.

The sluagh reacted to my forthcoming as always enthusiastically by intermitting their feast and beginning to interrogatively approach me. No matter for how long these demented creatures had been feeding here I knew that their appetite was unquenchable and even now they were groaning to make me into their next dish.

But they had no idea that I was planning to do the very same thing to them.

The first sluagh to draw near rapidly rolled past me and tried to deliver a hit to my chest before I even had a chance to attack it. Its speed was far greater than the speed of the sluagh that I had encountered previously, so I hardly managed to dodge from the strike.

I immediately countered with a horizontal sword cut, but then the sluagh showed some adroitness of its own, deftly ducking from the Reaver's flaring blade. The agility of the spectral parasite surprised me and I raised the blade vertical to the ground, temporarily taking the defensive position.

Before the sluagh could come up with a second attack the other two predators had already caught up with their partner. Only now I noticed that one of them was moving on all fours like an animal and was a bit bigger than the rest of the pack.

The sluagh started acting literally in unison, all three lunging at me almost simultaneously.

I sprang back, at one time landing a sundering overhand blow right to the cranium of the four-footed wretch that got the nearest to me.

The green bile-like blood sprayed in all the directions and the bigger sluagh got stunned.

The other two vermin apprehensively staggered back, while I swiftly took the advantage and continued my onslaught on their fellow scavenger.

I descended upon the head-wounded sluagh with a flurry of sweeping sword strikes, the Reaver shrieking in anticipation of the upcoming meal each time it tore through the jelly-like flesh of the beast.

As the derivative matter around the parasite's astral body got completely destroyed, the wraith blade absorbed its screaming spirit like liquid without giving it a chance to escape.

The rest of the pack were obviously bewildered to watch their partner disappear in the Reaver's fire, but didn't flee like the weak-hearted majority of their kind that I had met heretofore. Apparently the plentiful amount of souls to feed had enhanced both these creatures' strength and courage, and now they were intent upon fighting to finish.

When the space between us got cleaned, the two remaining sluagh again took the offensive.

The carnivores of the spirit world encircled me and applied the same strategy they did before – they started striking at me slightly synchronically, but this time from different angles. I had to admit that for mindless chowhounds these creatures had pretty decent combative thinking… but still not decent enough to get the better of me.

The moment they lunged at me for the third time I promptly skewed their clawed paws and delivered a roundhouse cut to both of them.

The sluagh howled in pain as the green plasma that filled the thin coat of matter around their insubstantial carcasses splattered before their own eyes.

Not losing a second, I darted at the soul-eating beasts again, the blade in my hands ready for another doubled thrust.

The sluagh to the right managed to avoid my assault, but the one to the left took the blow to the full extent.

The Reaver sliced all the way through its semisolid torso, at once dismattering it and swallowing the exposed defenseless spirit.

As the last survivor of the pack realized that it was left alone in this skirmish, its instinct of self-preservation had finally outshined its former audacity and the parasite attempted for a runaway.

I took a jump into the air and landed right in front of the escaping soul-eater, blocking its way, and then threateningly flourished at it with the wraith blade.

The sluagh began to back up frightenedly until I nailed it to the cliff behind. Probably conceiving that escape was no option the tired-down beast ravened at me out of desperation with its mouth agape.

I easily sidestepped the vermin's sharp-toothed jaws and pierced it with the sword, the flaring blade burying itself in the sluagh's trepelloid composition and tearing its astral body from the membrane of matter it was wrapped in.

When the creature's essence was sucked into the green blaze of the Reaver, my eyes glowed with renewed power and I once again felt my soul energy to be fully restored.

The way to the material realm was now open to me.

* * *

I returned to the world of the living through the same portal near the waterfall that I had discovered earlier.

Once more the Reaver was manifesting itself from my right arm in its physical form, its flame now changed from green color to blue… so much like that strange energy that was oozing from the lock of the cathedral's door.

The Elder God instructed me formerly that the wraith blade would help me 'gain entry where my path was previously blocked'. All this lead me to the conclusion that perhaps the Reaver could turn out to be the key to that mystical door.

So I approached the entrance to the cathedral again, but this time, as I hoped, with the means of opening it.

At once my eyes got bent on the energy-exuding aperture that was outlined on the dark-grey background of the door as if beckoning the visitor to put into it something that would unseal this mysterious lock.

Although the idea of the wraith blade being the key to the door belonged to me, it still seemed too weird to be true.

Anyway, I had no other alternative now but to try _my_ plan and at least hope that it would not prove a disaster.

Still being full of second thoughts I carefully inserted the Reaver into the lock.

To my surprise, the blade's ethereal corpus fit perfectly into the fissure and as I continued to plunge it deeper, I sensed some kind of magnetism beginning to pulsate in this contact.

When the sword immersed itself into the key hole almost up to its pommel, the lock flashed with glaring light in a sound of electric discharge.

Some invisible power violently forced the blade out of the aperture, the impact all but knocking me off my feet.

With an effort I caught my balance and then saw the door divide in two parts, each one moving off sideward with gnash.

My triumph soared higher than ever in that moment, as I gradually began to conceive that the Reaver had genuinely unsealed the door and that my way into the cathedral was finally free.

But apart from the heartwarming feeling of pride that the unveiling of this riddle had enlightened me with it had also sparked a lot of questions in my mind.

First and foremost, if the door to the cathedral could only be opened with the Soul Reaver, how had the vampire hunters have broken into it earlier?

Did that mean that the mortals possessed some unique means of their own that had helped them avoid this obstacle?

No, that could not be possible…

Besides, the door carried the symbol of the Reaver itself, which indicated that the sword was the one and only key to it.

I began to suspect that this hurdle was built up here deliberately in advance of my contemplated resurrection.

But who could have done that?

And most importantly – _when_?

Only a couple of days might have passed between the humans' besiegement of the cathedral and my arrival here.

Whoever had established this arcane entrance within such a short period of time should have known about my come-back from hell from the very inception.

And for now I knew only one person except for my ancient protector with such a conversance – Kain…

And if this theory of mine was correct, then what was awaiting me inside this edifice was nothing but another set of his traps prepared specifically for me.

I crossed the threshold of the entrance with a mixed sense of anxiety and intensity, for I knew exactly that whatever I would find within the walls of this building would certainly be shocking and distasteful: the degraded clan of my brother, the immured vampire hunters if there were still some of them alive, further traces of Kain's machinations…

I wished I could abstain from visiting this place, and yet I knew I couldn't.

The hour was late, and I still had no notion of how to reach the northern territories of Nosgoth, where my former Master was supposed to be already waiting for me.

Again I was standing on the precipice of another new quest, which I had to complete fast if I still wanted to see our world live.

Walking through the front door got me into a spiraling corridor, which stretched along the perimeter of the ground tier. The walls and the floor were made of some fawn-colored brick - obviously the best material to sustain the water that the fundament of the cathedral was sunken into.

I didn't know which way to go and decided to act on blind faith, instinctively choosing to run rightwards.

However, this option fell down as soon as I turned round the corner, for it emerged that here the corridor was passing into a water-filled rescission. From the color of this water I deduced that it was not a sewage where the liquid could be supplied for some domestic purposes, but clearly the water of the lake around the cathedral.

So it appeared that the building was surrounded by water not only from the outside, but from the inside as well. The more I learned of the constructive features of this structure, the more I kept wondering at the unorthodox approach of the human architects. This whole water base here surely served some significant goal and I was eager to clarify what goal it was.

Since I no longer had any second options, I quickly ran back to the left side of the corridor. This part of the passage was descending, leading somewhere below, but having no water rescissions whatsoever. Evidently this wing of the cathedral was based on some firm ground; otherwise the water would have inevitably permeated here from the cracks in the fundament.

The corridor itself proved to be longer than I could have imagined, stretching forward on and on as I kept running along it. The human architects made sure that those who wanted to infiltrate the cathedral would have to make a serious distance before getting into the heart of the edifice. The Zephonim, nevertheless, managed to do so, and now it was my turn to follow their example.

The conformed running through the constantly lengthening passage-way had almost bored me, until my ears detected some odd noise coming from above.

The sound resembled some kind of bone crackling, and after a few seconds it also got diluted by a subdued hiss.

I looked up at the ceiling with the Reaver in my hands at the ready, but failed to see anything there. The corridor was very dark, and whoever was prowling me here was making perfect use of this obscurity to lurk in it.

The crackling noise continued, as I started gazing around and above, trying to spot my chaser. But instead it was me who got spotted, when all of a sudden something or somebody hit me to the back of my head from behind.

Off-balanced I fell face-burst, the wraith blade incontinently losing its material projection and disappearing from my right arm. It always annoyed me that only one shot to my body, even an insignificant one, sufficed to deprive me of the Reaver's power in the real world, and especially exactly then when I needed it most.

I half got up and touched the back of my head with my talons to examine whether there was any wounding. To my unfortunate I found out that the hit left me busted open, blue blood-like energy smearing my left hand at the first contact. Although the injury was painless for me, I knew that my soul energy would now deplete faster as long as the wound remained open. I had to devour a soul to heal it and retrieve the blade's manifestation, and the spirit of my assailant would fit as fiddle.

Full of determination, I regained my feet under me and turned around to face the one who had attacked me.

But what then rose to my view left me standing almost paralyzed.

Before my eyes appeared a tall creature with a skeletal build, its arms and legs wiry and thin, perhaps even thinner than mine. The creature's skin was pale grey, while its hind limbs were ivory black as if it was wearing leathers. Its neck was sinewy, with some tensed skin membrane growing out of it and coalescing with the shoulders.

The fiend had a small skull with very prominent fangs and a couple of strange black dots on its forehead which looked like several more pairs of eyes.

But the strangest thing about the creature's appearance were its front limbs – they were probably twice longer than its legs, hanging low and reaching the floor, their joints bent inward as if they were broken.

These elongated arms, if it was the right word to call them, ended with tridactyl talons, which could only belong to a vampiric entity.

As I had noticed this feature, my conscience started scrambling its way through the flabbergasted state of mind that the creature's visage left me in, making me perceive the worst thing that I could have expected – this hideous being in front of me was a Zephonim.

Although I had already witnessed myself how terribly the corruption had affected the clans of the Dumahim and the Melchiahim, even this horrific experience failed to toughen my heart against what I was beholding now. The ghouls that I had been coming across until this moment were, however grotesque, at least of a vampiric guise. But this abhorrent deformity standing before me now was blasphemous to be even referred as to a representative of my once honorable race. If this morbid creature truly shared my brother's congeniality, then one could only quail at the thought of how cruelly Zephon's evolution must have contaminated him.

The Zephonim sniffed and then got on all fours; its gaunt front limbs stretching forward hazardously close to me. The quadrupedal posture was giving the monster a very spider-like exteriority.

The devolved vampire tilted its little head to the left and stared at me through its beady sinister eyes as if studying its wondrous prey.

I spread my talons wide, preparing to take the fight, but suddenly the same rattling sound that I had heard seconds away came from behind and distracted me.

I starkly turned my head and saw another Zephonim standing abaft and eyeballing me with a bloodthirsty look.

This one looked identical to the first one, but its skin was of a darker shade and instead of dots on the forehead it had a pattern in the form of a huge black arrow with its head pointing downward.

These creatures seemed to have dropped on me from above, although there were no ledges or cornices there. Definitely there was yet much for me to discover about their abilities.

Now that it had become a two on one struggle I had to work out a strategy of dealing with these gollywogs. With their lengthy mandibles the Zephonim had a firm advantage over me, for they could easily keep me at a bay by assaulting me from perhaps a twice longer distance than I could. Though I always preferred the offensive style of fighting, I realized that now it would be better to hunker down for a time and wait for a suitable moment to execute a counterattack.

But first I had to get out of this flawed position between them. So I drew my back against the wall behind, trying to keep both Zephonim within my sight.

When the one to the right finally opened up the brawl by swinging at me with its bony arm, I harshly leaped off the wall in front of me and made a diagonal somersault over the onrushing vampire.

The Zephonim attempted to knock me off in mid-air, but missed the shot, while I safely landed behind its back.

The monster adroitly slewed round in a single twist of its anemic body and continued to take further horizontal swings at me, each one winging the air with a whiz. The dystrophic bodily constitution had made these beings extremely agile and it took a great effort of mine to dodge their lightning-fast blows.

After failing to deliver several more shots to me the skeleton-like vampire attempted for a vertical attack, lashing at me with both its front limbs raised above its head.

This was the moment that I was waiting for, and without skipping a beat I slid under the lunging beast, stabbing my talons into its ribcage.

The Zephonim screeched in pain, instantly losing all its aggressive pep, as I continued to drive my claws deeper into its torso.

When I almost grabbled for the ghoul's heart to pluck it out, another Zephonim came out of nowhere, clinging onto the left wall and then scaling it in my direction at a killing speed.

Before I even managed to react the wall-climbing creature slashed me to the face with its enormously long arm, forcing me to draw my hand out of its partner's brisket and shrank a few steps back.

The vampire that I was trying to disembowel remained standing upright, squealing in anguish and grasping at its heavily bleeding wound, while the other one jumped at me straight from the wall and knocked me flat.

The snapper ghast pinned me to the floor and tried to bite my neck with its slavering mouth, but I kicked it into the stomach with both my feet, sending it flying.

The wretch landed right on its limbs and then crawled back to me forthwith, each of its scuttling legs performing not less than ten moves per second. The velocity of these predators was unbelievable and for the first time I felt yielding in quickness to my adversaries.

The Zephonim again started throwing its talons at me, while I had nothing left to do but keep on edging away from the violent swipes, looking for a moment to counter.

In the full swing of the struggle the energy exhaustion reminded me of itself afresh, causing my vision to swim a little and thus making me linger in my mobility for a split second.

My opponent responded to this momentary weakness of mine in less than no time and launched forward its right limb, shooting a string of some chalk white stuff from its wrist directly into my face.

At the last gasp I managed to block my face with my left forearm, this strange substance gluing to it instead. Only now I realized that this sticky white thing that the monster threw at me was a web… a spider web.

In all likelihood my comparing of the Zephonim with the spiders turned out to be not that abstract after all, for their arachnidan treats didn't stop at their appearance. After I had seen the descendants of my brother scale vertical ground and even shoot web it had become obvious that they didn't only resemble, but _were_ spiders, at least partly. One could only be lost in conjectures by which reasons the Nupraptor's poison that was inherited by Kain and then passed to other clans had made them devolve in this or that way. The vampires native to this time had developed great adaptiveness to their environment, but lost their rational minds, having turned into subhuman animals, and the Zephonim were pointedly no exception. I had no clue why the corruption brought them to inhabiting these vile arthropod-like carcasses, but I was dead sure that the source of each clan's putrefaction always lay with their leaders. Maybe when I would eventually find Zephon I would have some clarity put into this secret.

In the meantime, my enemy continued its incursion by clasping the web-string with both its arms and beginning to pull it, dragging me closer to itself.

I bore my feet against the floor, withstanding the manhandling, and then jerked my left arm with all my might, the cobweb all but breaking.

The vampire's underweight had finally counted against it, and the Zephonim toppled over and got dragged to me instead.

When it clashed into me, I slashed its snout with my free arm, my talons dissecting right through its eyes.

Blood squirted on the right wall as the arachnid ghoul started shrieking and plucking at its ragged face, losing its grip of the web-string.

With my left arm lastly broken from bonds I viciously hurled myself at the Zephonim, forcing all my talons into its already blood-steaming eyes.

The snark rived in agony, desperately trying to fight back with all its limbs twisting back and forth, but I continued to squeeze its skull with my claws tighter and tighter.

Soon the brain box cracked, letting the disgusting mixture of gore, marrow slime and worse flow out of it and run all over the dying grimace of the beast's face.

The Zephonim screamed one last time and its limbs had grown still.

I unclenched my talons, letting the dead body fall headlong into the puddle of its own blood, and then removed the cowl from my lower jaw, getting ready to devour the creature's essence that began to rise from its corpse.

As the Zephonim's soul got imbibed into the pulsing glow of my gaping maw, I felt its energy enriching mine, but for this once not completely. The brawl must have taken too much of my stamina and one soul was not enough to fully redeem it. But still this feeding was howbeit vital for it could sustain me in the material realm for some more time – undoubtedly more than I needed to finish off the second Zephonim.

I took a squint at the belly-wounded vampire that I started battling earlier before its 'friend' had ambushed me. The feral creature was still harrumphing over the injury I had inflicted on it, surrounded by the pools of its own blood on the floor here and there.

Quick off the mark I darted at the gaunt beast, again aiming at its sternum.

The Zephonim attempted to defend itself, but the trauma had patently weakened it and all its moves had become too slow for me.

After eluding its bony arm shots I knocked my foot right into the fresh puncture in its abdomen, nailing the devolved ghoul to the wall.

The hardly closed wound opened up anew in a crimson spray of blood, as I continued to press the monster against the wall and plunged my talons into its skinny neck.

The Zephonim wallowed with all its limbs like a bug that got turned upside down until my hand reached for its windpipe and brutally yanked it out.

The arachnid started choking on its own gore, then limped bluntly and slipped down the wall, leaving a smearing bloodstain on it.

The liberated vampire spirit broke from the deceasing osseous figure, quivered in air as if trying to fly away, but then got inhaled by the gleaming cavernous hole in my chest.

At last my energy was refilled, all my wounds healed and skinned over, and the Soul Reaver was again projecting itself from my right arm, beaming in the darkness of the corridor like a gigantic blue candlelight.

The battle was over, a small, but difficult one.

At this point I had confronted only two members of the Zephonim, but inside this cathedral there could be hundreds or perhaps thousands of them waiting for me.

I didn't know how many of them I would have to face afterwards, but at least now I knew what I was doing business with…


	2. Chapter 2: The Hymn of Death

**The Hymn of Death**

After a while the spiraling corridor finally ended with a pair of doors. The long-drawn running through this infinite seeming passage-way had terribly peeved me, so I roughly threw the doors open with my foot, willing to visit any other premises of the cathedral that could be of some interest to me.

The swung-open entrance brought me to an open-air courtyard area.

The eye-striking absence of the ceiling was a pleasant discovery, for it meant that the Zephonim were unable to ambush me here from above.

I swept my eyes over the central part of the courtyard and beheld four roughly cylindrical buildings of different heights with shallow, doomed roofs.

The purpose of these buildings was absolutely inscrutable, since they had neither entries nor gateways, only some sort of windows at their tops.

Whereas the Zephonim would have no trouble getting to these alcoves with their ability of scaling walls, the cathedral together with its whole interior was designed by the humans in the first place, so there could be no way that these strange constructions were meant to serve as living accommodations. Instead their assignment was much more likely intended to be of some functional application, but what kind of application that was remained an enigma.

The walls around the periphery of the courtyard had dozens of metal pipes concealed into their brick foundation. Those were not the pipes that were designated to send the hymn of death across this land, but merely hydraulic pipes, at least by the look of it.

Once more I chanced upon the notable concern of the cathedral's architects with the idea of supplying great quantities of water. This subdivided sewerage system must have been deliberately engineered to collect the water from the lake around the edifice and then store it inside the cathedral.

But to what end?

Even if the humans wanted to have a stable source of sewage water to be re-used in the future or to be produced into drinking water, why did they have to immerse the entire cathedral's fundament into the lake? There had to be some explanation to this, and to unravel it I had to explore the construction's inward further.

I passed one pair of cylinder-like buildings and got a sight of another entrance located high above the ground. The folding stone door with two square symbols of the Zephonim clan that were symmetrically engraved either side of it was half open and most likely led to the second tier of the cathedral. But curiously enough there were no leathers or steps nearby that could help with reaching this perched location, which again made me wonder how the humans could have built such an object to which they themselves would have had no physical access whatsoever.

However, judging by these engravings of my brother's clan on both sides of the entrance one could conclude that the Zephonim had clearly undertaken some alteration of the edifice to their own taste, so it could be possible that they simply destroyed all the previous ingressions to the upper tiers to prevent the potential visitors from infiltrating the heart of their cloister.

But they failed to foresee that one day they would be attended by someone with advanced powers like mine who will prove this hindsight of theirs.

I started pacing round the lowest building of all fours, cogitating how I could climb on it and then on others to get to a proper height and reach the entrance, when my thoughts got distracted by the already familiar rattling sound coming from somewhere hereby. It was the third time when I got to hear this noise, but it had long since become annoying, for I already knew that it signified the approaching of another group of Zephonim with their ugly thin limbs scraping along the ground.

I flourished my right arm, raising the wraith blade in the offensive position.

The crepitating sound continued to draw closer, but it was still impossible to pinpoint from where my enemies were impending me. I kept looking in every direction, ready to repel the upcoming attack in any second, but the furtive Zephonim wouldn't stop playing mind games with me.

I only needed to ease my concentration for an instant when on the spur of the moment a sprawling but scraggy figure leapt out of the shade of the neighboring building, its fangs and talons aimed at me.

With a little protraction I rolled away from the lunge, letting the arachnidan vampire land on the floor with its joints crunching from impact. Although I failed to mould a counterattack I still managed to slip off unscathed and thus retain the Reaver's manifestation, which was greatly vital. The Zephonim that assaulted me before had succeeded in depriving me of my weapon at the very beginning of the brawl, and I could not let such thing happen again.

I quickly got back to my feet and gird myself for a fight.

The Zephonim that had taken a jump on me now stood in front of me spreadeagled, hissing and feverishly tilting its tiny head hither and yon. Now that the ghoul's body was no longer covered by shadows, I discerned that it was probably twice bigger than the bodies of the other two Zephonim that I had previously confronted in the corridor. Apart from its enlarged size the beast also had several spikes growing out of its forelimbs, while its back was decorated with some strange dark skin frill, looking like an additional pair of undeveloped legs. The creature's eyes were large and sinister, blazing with diabolical red light like those of all Nosgoth's fully grown vampires. Apparently those two Zephonim that I had met previously were fledglings, while this one before me belonged to the clan's adult species. And if it was truly so, then it would prove to be an even more powerful and formidable foe than its junior counterparts.

The spider-like ghast surged forward at me with a swipe of its forelimb, as I simultaneously ducked back, holding the Reaver in front of me outstretched to provide a safe distance between me and my opponent. With their extraordinary speed and agility the Zephonim were not the kind of enemies that could be battled carelessly, so I again had to stand on the defensive and let the vampire throw the first punch that would provide me the elbow room for a counter-manouevre.

The arachnidan ghoul went on bouncing around me on all its bony limbs, incessantly swinging at me with its elongated arms and snapping at me with its jaws. The vampire's velocity was deucedly difficult to conform to, but soon I managed to get the hang of its moves and warded its next blow by smiting off its winging left front limb with my sword. The Zephonim's extremities were nearly fleshless, so there was no voluminous bleeding when the truncated stump of the monster's mandible flew aside. Nevertheless it didn't lessen the hurt from the wounding and the devolved brute bawled in pain at the top of its lungs and rapidly retreated back in the shades where it came from.

I squatted a bit, preparing to spring at the injured Zephonim and finish it off, but suddenly the familiar crackling sound that had recently become very oft-recurring again emerged somewhere round and halted me. More Zephonim, both adult species and fledglings, started creeping out from behind the cylindrical buildings, some of them crawling up the floor and some scaling the buildings' surfaces. First there were only three or four that showed up, but slowly there were getting more and more of them, all gathering around their wounded relative and then moving as one toward me.

If fighting a couple of Zephonim at the same time was more or less feasible, then fighting a dozen would be unreasonable to say the least. Backing off was not the best option either: the only approachable way out of the courtyard lay upwards and it still could not give me any positional superiority over these sprawling wretches, since they could easily scale this high ground. Even escaping into the spectral realm was no solution, for there was a risk of losing the physical capacity of climbing on the second tier or failing to find any portal back into the material dimension. Everything indicated that the brawl was inevitable, but I could not rush into it headlong with such a numeral advantage on my adversary's side. Somehow I needed to leave this place and still bring off a battle to the Zephonim, and to do this I would have to make use of all my resourcefulness.

Hurriedly I started looking around in search of something that would help me get on the top of the circular-shaped building that stood by my side as a dozen pairs of spidery legs continued to scrap the ground in my direction with a token rustling sound. Even the lowest construction of all these fours was too high for me to reach, and as ill luck would have it there were no blocks or wreckages close by to use as a spring board.

The Zephonim were getting closer and closer and when there was almost one last foot left between me and their verging swarm, I made the only decision I could, instinctively jumping on the water-pipe that projected from the right wall and then leaping from it toward the building's alcove. My left hand talons barely caught hold of the window's overhang and I hung heavily on one arm, constrainedly tucking with my claws into the stone ledge to refrain my body from falling down. Unfortunately I was unable to help myself with my right hand since it could not relinquish its inextricable grip of the Reaver, but to get rid of the blade even in such a desperate situation was unacceptable either, for it was my only trump card against the Zephonim. Again I found myself caught in a dilemma with only a fraction of a second to make a choice.

All of a flutter I glanced down and saw that the arachnidan vampires had already readjusted to my quick shifting and started perching on the fabric's surface after me. The gravity of this sight stirred my strength and I sturdily tensed up my left arm muscles, pulling myself up on the ledge literally single-handedly.

As I finally managed to chin up and step on the cornice with both my feet I drastically jumped forward to the center of the roof, trying to land as far as possible from its sloping edges. The slovenliness and imminence of the moment had forced me to act without a single opportunity of planning any of my moves, but as soon as I felt the steady plane of the roof underneath me my senses told me that the "summit" was at last conquered.

Having recollected my composure I turned to the side from which I climbed on the roof and cautiously stepped on its slanting brink, the wraith blade in my right hand ready for a deadly swipe. I knew that the Zephonim could crawl on the walls equally fast as they did on the ground and it would take them only a few seconds to scramble the overall height of the construction and catch up with me.

Just as the first pair of limbs showed out of the roof's edge I furiously sliced at them with the sword, chopping off both rod-shaped outgrowths in one stroke. An agonized cry rang out and the arthropod beast that used to be the leader in this rush for my head went down, unable to cling to the structure without its forepaws.

Another ghoul came left of the center and at once had its head sawed clean off, the decapitated skinny carcass flaccidly losing the grasp of the fundament and falling down. The released vampire soul broke loose right out of the gaping hole in the corpse's neck and then flew straight into the firing blade of the Reaver, which shrieked in approval of receiving its long-desired meal.

More spider-like vampires continued to hive around the roof as I kept taking swings in all the directions to prevent them from getting too close to me. Unlike the Dumahim whose skin was strengthened with heavy innate armor through which even the Soul Reaver could not always tear with ease the Zephonim had less solid and protected flesh and the wraith blade aptly severed their emaciated skulls, limbs and torsos in a single blow.

The sword had greatly countervailed my chances against these monsters and I knew I had to keep it summoned as long as possible if I wanted to eventually prevail over them.

But to do this was getting even tougher as more arachnids went on climbing on the top and forcing me back to the brim of the platform.

Surrounded and outnumbered I started hacking and slashing ceaselessly at everything around me without distinction, the Reaver greedily singing its shrilling song of devourment. The dystrophic corpuses about me were diligently emerging and disappearing, and then new ones were immediately taking their places. I had no idea where such manifold clutter was coming from but its numbers didn't seem to be decreasing at all and I was beginning to perceive that I would not be able to deter this invasion for much long.

I had to make it upwards and I had to make it quick.

After disrupting another aggressive pack of the Zephonim I finally won a second to take a fluent hinge at the vicinal circular buildings. Two distant structures to the left were visibly too high and far for me to reach, so the only option I had was to try to ascend the one that lied ahead. This construction was also taller than the one I was standing on now and too remote to simply jump as well, but yet it was the only object I could possibly attain from this position.

My sole hope now was to use my ruined wings, for they alone could carry me over such distance without making me lose height.

The chirping sound of another dozen of spidery legs was already drawing near, leaving me no extra second to linger on the roof. Having no time for doubts I roughly scrabbled with my left hand talons at my own chest to quickly diffract the Reaver's manifestation and free my right hand. The splash of weakness and decay rushed into my flesh like a wave, but I paid almost no attention to it, poignantly grabbing the shabby ends of my wings' tissue and leaping off the platform.

Since this was an open air courtyard I easily caught the wind flow, which swelled out the flaps of membrane on my back like sails and gave me the speed and the volatility that I needed. Soared by the strong air currents, I glided toward the building in front of me, hearing behind me the puzzled and displeased snorting of the Zephonim who had just enthralled the upper platform of the hind construction in pursuit of me. One of them even tried to jump after me and hit me in mid-air, but failed to reach my hovering body and collapsed to the ground with a long and loud shriek.

I only concentrated on my flight, trying to cope with the unruly wind gusts and keep the proper direction. The front wing of the building had no window to catch hold of, so I had to land directly on its roof, otherwise my venture would prove a disaster.

Luckily the wind force carried me right to the top of the structure and I landed on its flat centre with authority. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the Zephonim would regroup and start hounding me on this construction, but I still had a small pause to catch my breath and consider my next step.

The two higher towers on the left side of the courtyard still remained inaccessible and my broken wings were useless here. The only location within my range was the courtyard's aisle wall - also rather tall, but with lots of jutting hydraulic pipes to cling onto.

Having braced my energies I unfalteringly took a spring at the wall, grabbing the thickest pipe I could reach and then beginning to climb the others like a ladder. The Zephonim were yet far below me, but I still clambered as fast as could, knowing that these nimble critters could overtake me much quicker than it could seem now.

So I continued to desperately grope for the metal tubes with my talons and then push them off with my feet until I lastly got on the wall's upper plane.

As I stood erect I took another peek at the pair of structures that I was trying to rise to, now clearly seeing that the east alcove of the closest one could now be attained effortlessly. All that remained was to walk the wall's surface and then my main goal would be almost achieved.

But to incarnate this aspiration of mine turned out to be easier said than done, when all out of the clear another Zephonim brusquely crept out from under the water pipes on the left side of the wall and blocked my way to the other end of the platform.

As the snark arose before me I saw that it was missing half of its left forelimb. It took me some time to interrogate my memory and recall that it was the same arachnid whose arm I had smote off in a combat at the bottom of the courtyard. There appeared that the ghoul was now looking for some payback after this and therefore even decided to come forth from amongst its swarm to face me here all by itself. Obviously the corruption had destroyed the vampires' intelligence, but not their vengefulness, and now this quality of my former race's specimen could cause me some grave problems. The Zephonim must have intentionally chosen this place to ambush me, for even without one limb it would still have much more chances to counterpoise on the wall's narrow top-face than me.

The spider-like horde underneath me kept on getting more and more imminent and I realized that I had neither time nor space to battle this arm-missing leech in front of me.

With no Reaver to help me instantly clear my way I took several steps backwards, provoking the beast to deliver the first attack.

The enraged vampire feinted at me, as I concurrently vaulted over its skeletal figure, eluding the trenchant blow and then landing behind its back.

Once my feet touched the brick surface of the wall I ran forward like crazy without any backward glance, trying to get on the ill-stared building before the Zephonim could overhaul me.

However, running without looking back proved to be not such a good idea, of what I got convinced when something sharply seized me by the right leg, making me fall on my face. Before I even managed to recover my senses my whole body began to get dragged back with force, nuzzling hard against the brick fundament and kicking up a lot of dust.

I turned my head and found my leg to be glued to a long thread of sticky cobweb, the arm-missing ghoul holding its other end braided around its singular right forelimb and arduously pulling it. I had cleanly forgotten that the Zephonim could shoot web like real spiders, and it angered me badly that I had negligently let such vital thing slip my mind.

I started fighting the dragging tooth and nail, but the arachnid vampire managed to withstand my resisting and continued to haul me closer and closer. This ghoul was an adult, and even with only one arm it was pulling me perhaps twice stronger than that fledgling that "caught" me in its web in the corridor.

In desperation I clutched at the thin water-pipe at my right elbow to prevent my body from any further approximation to the wrathful Zephonim. The feral vampire at once felt the tension in the cobweb and savagely jerked it, the power of the yank tearing both ends of the pipe from the wall in a spray of sewage water.

With one mighty sweep I was rudely drawn by the leg to the devolved arachnid, the jagged fragment of pipe still reflexively clasped in my right hand.

As my carcass got within the beast's grasp the Zephonim released its hold of the web-string and aimed at me with its right forelimb.

The creature's talons were an inch away from my face when in the flicker of a second before the impact I trippingly squeezed the pipe in my hand and with one vigorous scoop forced it straight into the monster's right eyeball. Blood sprinkled all over me as the Zephonim that was now missing not only its arm but also its eye started screaming at the top of its voice and snatching at the pipe that tightly stuck in its orbit.

I promptly stood up, ready to deliver the flouncing ghast the final blow, but then in this very moment the entire wall's plane began to get flooded by the clutter of predators that I was running away from. It was nearly comical that for already the second time my confrontation with this particular vampire ended this way, and just like before I had to flee from the battlefield without the soul of my injured opponent. But right now I was in no position to choose and thus hastily escaped the approaching swarm by leaping off the wall toward the neighboring building.

With both hands free I easily fastened upon the window's cornice and perched on the construction's shelter, the absence of the wraith blade for this once rather inuring me than not.

The Zephonim behind me didn't keep me waiting and promptly began to jump on the building after me, featly clinging with their spidery legs to the round stone surface.

In the interim another pack of arachnids on the ground became separated from the main herd and started edging the fourth tower that I was looking forward to storming. The ghouls must have eventually figured out my target point and were now planning to obstruct my path to the upper tier from two sides.

As time was again working on my enemies' side I did the only thing I was left to do, immediately gamboling high in the air and spreading my broken wings. The air motions enshrouded my stretched out arms and legs and drifted my body onwards, leaving the roof of the hind tower far behind me.

Abaft of me the vampires had already straggled over the construction, but none of them even attempted to seize me, for I was long since well away from there. Some tried to throw web at my gliding frame, but not a single shot was successful in carrying that far. The clammy substance that the beasts emanated from their wrists was too viscous and ropy and apparently could only be used effectively at short distances.

The engraved banners of the Zephonim clan astride the entrance looked as if becoming larger while I kept approaching the last remaining construction. The ascension on the second tier of the cathedral was not an easy task and the realization that it was close upon finally being encompassed was making my heart throb pleasantly.

But then the spectacle beneath me reminded me that the 'close upon'-state was not yet a victory: the arachnidan vampires were already crawling up to the structure's shelter, notably getting the start of me in this chase. There were not many ghouls in their pack in comparison with the swarm that had I left behind, but still more than enough to congest the whole roof plane. Several of them had already scaled the top, now watching me hover in their direction and holding their clawed forepaws in train for a hard shot.

I knew they would do anything to prevent me from coming past and decided to use abruptness to burst my way through their throng.

When the last couple of feet was left between me and the building's tip I shortly quit hold of my wings and shot out my arms, letting my wheeling body dive with acceleration. I had noticed before that the quadruped postures were making it very uncomfortable for the Zephonim to counter vertical attacks, and this time it didn't turn out to be different: my unexpectedly impetuous landing caught two beasts at the verge of the roof completely startled and I ripped up both their snouts with two synchronic side blows.

The shelving edge of the shelter's plane I grounded on had almost made me lose my feet, but I sank my talons into the stone and managed to maintain the balance. Then without a secondary delay I darted forward through the remaining monsters, trying to rather push them aside than to injure them.

As I got into the very thick of their pack a dozen claws and fangs at once plunged into me, my soul energy bluntly going ebb to repair the damage done to my flesh. I tried to abstract away from the beating, pummeling the ghouls around me with everything I had to clear my way to the front platform.

"Only to reach the entrance…" I kept telling myself, fighting the slackening feeling of vertigo that the energy wane was giving me.

When the majority of arachnids fell back and made a lane for me, I darted forward again, this time sliding on my back and knocking several more vampires off the other end of roof.

My body began to slither down the shelter by inertia, and when I was about to collapse all the way to the ground my hands instinctively grappled at the roof's border and I pushed off the tower's wall with my feet, propelling right to the half-broken ledge of the second tier. The platform was not located very far from the fourth structure, so there was no need to use wings or even jump very high.

I clumsily landed right on a few half-cragged stone stairs, which perhaps once used to be a part of a ladder that connected the tier with the courtyard, just like I assumed earlier.

Exhausted from bruising and hunger, I drudgingly forced myself into a standing position and faltered several steps toward the half-open door that I had been straining after for all this time.

Before passing through the door I turned around and cast one more glance at the Zephonim behind me. The beasts were still swarming over the building that I had just leapt off and one of them that stood at the nearest verge of the roof tucked its legs and then took a pounce at me, its talons unclenched and pincers exposed for a bite.

Without waiting for the ghoul to sweep me off my feet I abandoned my physical body, letting the matter around my spirit dissolve into thin air. The Zephonim's lunging figure froze in space inches away from me and then vanished, everything around it going tinted blue and green and all the physical objects morphing into elongated parodies of their former selves.

The world of the dead was not a pleasant place, but as long as most of my enemies from the real world didn't exist here I could put up with that.

* * *

In the dark and warped reality of the spectral realm the doorway had grown narrower, though the entrance itself still remained quite passable. This revelation got me thinking that my shifting to the spirit world was a little precipitant, for the door could have plainly changed in such a way it would have become totally impervious. This time that didn't happen and I could count myself lucky, but in the future I had to be more prudent when moving from one dimension into another.

I squashed through the embrasure and found myself to be standing on a ledge above a small room with a large fractured hole at the bottom of its distant wall. Pieces of broken stone lay everywhere, evidencing that the place had clearly undertaken some serious crashing.

I jumped off the ledge and walked into the breach in the wall, eager to see where this non-purposed passage would lead me to.

Beyond the breach was another room, equal in size to the previous one, but with much less signs of disruption. To the left of the chamber I discerned several worn-out stairs going upwards and ending with a pair of gates that were also fractured.

Having little variety of options I walked up the stairs and entered the gateway, which brought me to a colossal oval hall. The blackened weft of the spirit world was making this vast area seem virtually empty, but as I continued to move forth, some figures in the distance slowly started teeming more distinct on the dark misty background.

And then I saw _them_ – the cathedral's pipes, the very ones that were once tuned to blast a deadly hymn meant to destroy every vampiric creature on the face of Nosgoth. In the transversal haze of the spectral realm they looked weirdly bent and twisted, but even such a distorting atmosphere could not divest them of their magnitude. Each pipe was almost as broad as those buildings that I was lugging on in the courtyard, all of them rising high to the upper tiers like a dozen titans made of brass. The humans that had crafted them and worshipped here were dead for centuries, and now these gigantic instruments of doom stood silent, the vacant spaces around them whistling their impotence. The size of the pipes was an unquestionable proof of their power, though it was still unclear what kind of mechanism or force it was that activated them into becoming this weapon of devastation.

Besides, what was this "hymn" that the humans wanted to unleash on the vampires through the pipes anyway?

Simply some loud noise that my former congeners were vulnerable to?

Or some music?

Or maybe choral singing?

The versions could be endless…

My brother's clan now had to be the only beings alive that knew the correct answers to all these questions, and I was looking forward to sharing this knowledge with them.

As I got closer to the pipes, I noticed that the floor behind them was passing into a broad oval rescission.

I approached the edge of the platform and tried to study the deepening, but in the darkness of the dead world it felt like staring into a gigantic black hole with nothing visible in it. Jumping there was too risky, for there was no guarantee that I would be able to get out of this cavity afterwards.

I realized that I had to return to the material realm and continue my exploration from there, so I quickly began to seek for a conduit.

Most of the ground that I had been able to cover by now didn't have any portals at all, so I had nothing to do but run along the entire hall's periphery in search of one.

While running I had located a tumble of shattered wood planks and torn ropes on the opposite side of the platform. Apparently this used to be some kind of elevator for the humans to take a lift to the upper levels of the cathedral, which, moreover, seemed to have been the only appropriate way of getting there. And if it was truly so then I would also have to scheme out another method of doing this once I was in the material world again.

After making nearly a whole lap lengthwise the platform I had lastly spotted a flaring circle of ions in the niche high above the gateway through which I entered the hall. It was the first time since my resurrection that I had found a conduit to the material world in such an unlikely place.

At first sight the location seemed to be beyond my attainment, but then I took one more slant at the contorted pipes behind me and figured out that I could make use of them to get the proper elevation.

In one acute movement I leaped on the hooked part of the central pipe, which was twirling rightwards almost parallel to the ground, then floated from it to the niche.

The breach was narrow like a needle's eye and I had to strike a crouching pose to squash into it.

When I got inside, the portal's coil was already under me, burning white and ready to transfer me back to the world of the living.

My soul energy was refilled so far, and I was ready for the shifting as well, but my hunger still remained unquenched as I had not devoured a soul ever since having entered this dimension. For some reason the cathedral's building didn't enjoy "popularity" by the lost spirits, while the Soul Reaver, though always projected when in the spectral realm, could not deliver me here from this stinging feeling of starvation.

But I knew that once in the material realm, all this would not matter anymore.

* * *

With substance once again collected around my spirit frame I saw the pipes in front of me become restored to their original straighten forms.

However, the forms were the only thing about their appearance that got restored in a good sense of this word, for their true outward was far worse than this shady illusion the spectral realm had presented to me.

In the material world all the pipes turned out to be damaged badly, few of them broken almost in half, their enormous cracked fragments lying on the platform and beneath it. Those that were still standing had numerous dents and breaches, which undoubtedly rendered them defective as well. The Zephonim had clearly strained every sinew to silence the pipes for perpetuity, and something told me that they did not simply do this out of their sense of duty to the vampire race. Even if it was Kain's order that they had to fulfill it was hardly the will of their Master, but the question of their own safety that had primarily determined the act.

I walked over the huge wreckages of the pipes on the floor and went down the rescission in the middle of the hall. Now I was able to see that the cavity was not very deep and I could boldly get in there.

I jumped down and landed on some stiff thin metal surface, which sagged a bit under my weight with a gnash.

I looked underneath and found myself to be standing on a broad lattice frame, below which was effulging the black watery waste. This was unmistakably the water that was collected from the lake around the cathedral by all those hydraulic pipes I had seen in the courtyard, and at that rate this area had to be the endpoint of this sewage system.

But what was it so special about this tier except for the cathedral's pipes to be located here that all the water was stored exactly in this place?

Did pipes have something to do with all this sewerage?

These questions had to be indispensably cleared up.

After about a minute of pointless gaping at the water space adown I walked to the opposite side of the rescission, the lattice floor grating under me with my every step.

There I found a large black boiler attached to the partition wall, the thick tube at its bottom submerged right into the water slick underneath the lattice. Just like the cathedral's pipes the boiler was broken heavily; numerous deep sags here and there were making it look like a massive piece of rumpled armor.

The only thing that mysteriously remained undamaged was the valve in its center, which even seemed to be well operative.

With no vaguest scheme of action in my head I grabbed the valve with my talons and tried to turn it over, doing this rather reflexively than consciously. The corroded ventil that had not been used for perhaps eons was turning very tightly, but still yielded to my strength.

As it did, the boiler began to shake and creak at its seams with thin blasts of steam spraying from them.

There felt as if this puffing mass of kneaded iron was about to explode in any second, so I prudently stepped back from it.

However, before long it became clear that the boiler was not to burst, although it still went on rattling loudly and menacingly.

I still didn't know what had made me turn its valve, but there didn't seem that this perfunctory tweak of mine had anyhow influenced anything around here.

With a little sense of disappointment I turned around to walk away, but then an unexpected discovery caught my eye and halted me: below the lattice floor the water suddenly began to grow restless. I stopped dead and watched quizzically as the water space underneath me continued to tremble and run higher with every second.

Soon the liquid was already bubbling and boiling hot, small volumes of vapor ascending over the grate into the air.

Full of interest I looked back at the bulging boiler behind me, now realizing that the water here was getting heated by this very device.

The boiler turned out to be truly functioning even despite all the damage it had sustained, albeit it was opaque what kind of aim all this water-heating system here pursued. Nevertheless this was, however small, a breakthrough, which made me feel that perhaps _now_ all the fragments would finally start to tie in an overall picture.

The sewage beneath me kept on warming up with steam becoming thicker and raising higher above the lattice. The fumes subsided with moisture on my blue skin, causing it to sizzle a bit as from any contact with water and thus stripping me of the Soul Reaver's projection, for this meant a lesion, no matter how fractional, to my physical body. It was a warning signal that I had to get out of this place so as not to absorb any more wounding, but I could not leave before I had the purpose of this whole heating thing unraveled. So instead of retreating I stood near the boiler to get out of the vapor's way, continuing to watch as it filled the whole tier's space like fog.

For a minute or two I remained in complete puzzlement, incapable of seeing any sense in what was going on before my eyes.

The pipes, the sewerage system, this boiler… All these things just would not fit any logic or reasoning, at least within the scope of my understanding.

My confusion lasted until I detected some strange honking noise beginning to inflate the entire hall.

The sound was dimmed by the sputtering of the quiescent water and rumbling of the boiler, but it was still perfectly detectable for my inherited vampiric hearing.

I proceeded to strain my ears as the noise went on spreading over the place as if it was growing stronger together with the water exhalation.

The humming tone was nearly musical like that produced by wind-instruments, but it was badly distorted by some whistles and howls, making it very difficult for me to track down. Moreover, it seemed to be coming out of everywhere around, which greatly complicated my task as well.

Something here was surely amiss, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Slowly, as I observed the vapor in front of me ascend even higher aloft, the sense of perception inside my head suddenly began to grow until it tipped over the edge of mere suspicion and brought me to an illumination of truth.

At last my mind had unified all the scraps of viewings I had into the answer to this riddle!

Everything appeared to be so easy I was almost chuffed with myself that it had taken me so long to conceive this.

The humming noise that had encompassed me now was produced by the cathedral's pipes when the steam that formed as a result of water evaporation filled their lines, making them tootle like trumpets. In fact, the steam was the very source of the cathedral's destructive force. The pipes themselves could not amplify any sound, even irrespective of its loudness, only due to their humungous size – they were merely a tool, an instrument that could collect the steam energy and then disgorge it for immense distances in the form of an ultra-intensified sound. The cathedral was like a gigantic pipe organ that operated on the vapor power, which is why the legends called its failed fatal blast 'the hymn of death'.

Now it was clear for what reason the human architects had built the cathedral drowned into the lake and constructed such an elaborate water-supplying complex within its walls. Everything about the cathedral's construction and content indicated its one and only destination – to purify Nosgoth of the vampires' presence what it would have surely managed to do if it had not been for the Zephonim's interference.

And so the mystery of the deadly hymn was deciphered, but even with this kind of knowledge my main objective still remained incomplete, for now I found myself to be faced with a problem of having no way to go.

Though it was plain that my path lay upwards I could see no opening of making it there: the elevator was destroyed and my wall-scaling skills were audibly no match for the ones the Zephonim used in surmounting such obstacles.

The situation looked to be a dead end to me, and there was no time like present that I needed any direction or hint from the Elder God. But just as always my ancient benefactor preferred to keep silent in such moments, leaving me alone with all my hardships.

The vapor kept on suffusing the tier with increasing power, now reaching me even standing out of its way. The steam-blasts were so strong that my membranous wings were bellowing out as if flapped by wind currents. For some reason I found this trifling discovery rather noteworthy and turned my head to get a partial survey of the blue tissue behind me clapping back and forth.

Since the fumes had a vertical direction and were that intense, I thought that maybe I could take advantage of them and with the help of my tattered wings get lifted up high enough to attain the upper tier. The idea felt too insane to be even considered seriously, and yet I realized that if it would not work, then nothing else would.

With a mixed sense of hesitation and desperateness I stepped on the steaming lattice, grabbed the tissues of membrane growing out of my back and prepared for whatever was going to come out of this. My whole body now was gently burning with vapor that was enshrouding me all over, and even though my undead skin of a specter could no longer sensate anything, I still remembered the esthesis of my flesh getting scorched by moisture so clearly I was almost experiencing it again.

The fumes began to inflate my wings, elevating me over the grate at first only for several inches. The soaring seemed to be so unsteady I felt I was about to go down in any second, but I still continued to hold my wings tightly and hover in mid-air as fluent as I could.

In a short time I managed to catch the balance and relax my muscles, letting my body levitate as if gliding wind-borne.

As unbelievable as it was but my plan appeared to have worked again.


	3. Chapter 3: Agony

**Agony**

The vapor had lifted me up to the height of perhaps twenty yards if not more, but the third tier still remained to be beyond my reach.

The walls around my gliding body were totally bare, with no signs of ledges or platforms to hang onto, so I exerted all my efforts to stay aloft, manoeuvring myself in the blasts of hot steam like a kite.

With every passed foot the fumes that were carrying my bulk kept on slowly losing their intensity, reminding me that I would not be able to maintain such altitude for much longer.

Mercifully I soon met a set of hydraulic pipes that jutted out of the surrounding brick fundament and at once caught at the thickest of them all.

Having pulled myself up on the pipe I sat down on its round surface and leaned my back against the wall it was concealed into, letting my legs hang low. Although the contact with the vaporized gas didn't steal that much of my soul energy, the flight I had taken was still very concentration-consuming, so I decided it would not be too bad if I let my body and my mind rest for a couple of minutes.

After having reconditioned myself I started clambering up the wall by snatching at the other pipes above me and in the short run got on the top of the next tier's platform.

The recognition of another ascent being finally over felt refreshing, though deep inside I perfectly understood that it was way too early to celebrate any accomplishments. Indubitably the Zephonim had infested this edifice up to its pinnacle, which meant that it was hardly the last time when I would have to conquer an arduous summit like this one. And since the steam coming from below could not carry me any higher than here, it also meant that I would have to get tangled into more charades to make my further progress possible.

The platform I stood on was well prominent over the ground of the tier, so from this vantage point I could perfectly observe the entire area below me.

Just like in the lower tier it was very dark here, almost as dark as if this was the spectral realm, but some details of the surroundings were still distinguishable: there were two uplifting tracks either side of the floor, each one passing into a long corridor with transparent glass walls that begirded the whole tier from both sides.

In the midst of all the traces of disruption I had already seen it was even surprising to behold something that fragile to be left untouched by the Zephonim.

The walls carried different traceries and tassels, their forms resembling some kind of a bell, but still looking like no other. Behind these walls the corridors seemed to be completely empty, however, there were several doorways visible through them, which indicated that the presence of these exotic extensions was no accident.

There was also a passage-way looming in the middle of the distant side of the hall, but right now I was more concerned with these unique glass aisles and decided to make my first move toward them.

I jumped off the platform and ran through the thick veil of blackness to the right end of the glassed passage. As I approached it I saw that the door leading to it was made of glass as well, the bell-like traceries on it looking even more distinct than on the lateral side of the wall. When I tried to open the door in a gentle manner it didn't respond, so without any further ceremonies I coarsely slashed it with my right hand.

To my amazement the blow proved to be thriveless: not only it failed to crash the door, but it didn't even leave a single scratch or cleft on it.

A little bit puzzled and enraged I hit the door several more times, but again to no avail. Either this was some sort of glyph magic that shielded this whole glass construction from any physical affects or it was simply made of some transparent but steadfast material _other_ than glass. At least now it was understandable how this structure remained standing here scatheless amidst everything destroyed by the Zephonim. Whatever lay within these translucent walls had to be of great significance if the humans had provided for such a dependable enclosure of this particular place.

Anyway this area was impassable for me right now and I would have to go other way until I would find means of gaining entry here.

Now that I had little variety of options I ran toward the central passage I had caught sight of while standing on the top of the platform.

This corridor was not as dark as the exposed area of the tier as it was illuminated by a couple of wall-hooked torches that sometimes interchanged with different weapons that hung nailed into the walls.

Before passing round the first corner I abruptly detected some rustling noise coming from the right wing of the passage.

I stopped short and leaned unto the wall, then carefully began to chasse-step closer to its edge, still listening to the strange sound.

As I peered out of the wall I saw that it was a Zephonim, a fledgling, constrainedly traipsing a huge hasp of grey webbing toward the other end of the corridor.

The devolved vampire must have been so much busy hauling whatever it had wrapped in its thread that even failed to sense my presence here.

I decided to make use of this abstraction, so I quietly took off a spear from the wall near me, then raucuously leapt out of the corner and threw it directly into the ghoul. The weapon got right into the Zephonim's head, piercing all the way through its skull in a rabid spurt of blood. The beast screeched and tumbled down in convulsions, its soul at once breaking loose from its dying body.

I lowered my cowl, taking the released vampiric essence, as my right arm spasm slightly with the return of the Reaver's projection, making me feel whole again.

When the emptied Zephonim's husk burned to ashes I slowly approached the webbing hasp that remained lying on the ground. I turned it over to have a better look at it and to my astonishment and horror found out that enlaced in this thread lay a human, his body imperviously covered in tenacious substance from head to toe with only one small trench around his nose and eyes.

The human appeared to be barely conscious, but when he saw me standing hunched over him his orbs widened in pure terror and he started feverishly trembling and mumbling with his glued lips.

I unclenched the talon on my left hand and mildly cut through the web-tissue where the human's mouth was. The ensnared mortal instantly began to ravenously gasp with air, still eyeballing me with a glance of catatonic fear.

"No… please, no…" he spoke hoarsely as if trying to scream, but lacking breath to do this.

"Fear not, human, I mean you no harm." I said in a cold, but tempered voice and continued to slit the coat of web he was enshrouded in down to his legs.

"No… you don't…" he went on croaking suffocatingly, but I ignored it, thinking that he was simply scared of me.

While I kept peeling the clammy stuff from the human's body I saw that he was encased in heavy scarlet armor with black pauldrons and gauntlets. Clearly this man was a warrior but his vestment looked different than the one I had seen on those vampire hunters gathered around a campfire not far from the cathedral. I did not yet know if he somehow related to their squadrons but he must have definitely invaded this edifice around the same time they did shortly before my arrival here, otherwise he would not even have been able to cross the main entry. Anyway, if he had managed to make it this far he had to know the cathedral's exterior pretty well, which gave me hope that I could obtain from him some useful information.

Suddenly when my claws tore through the thread in the area of the man's thigh he brusquely twitched and squalled.

I sharply took my hand away, unable to make out what was the warrior so much horrified with when all at once a blood steam sprang from under his right fauld, precipitately beginning to fill the web-tissue beneath it with red.

The human moaned and turned his pale sweaty face away, squinting in a grimace of pain and despair.

Still feeling rather befuddled I leaned over the ensnared mortal again and hefted the crumpled fauld of his to study the source of this unexpectedly profuse bleeding.

"My God…" I exclaimed aloud, failing to hide the feeling of shock that my discovery had given me.

Underneath the ragged piece of armor I saw a huge avulsed wound, some of its hardly healed edges still cleaved to the torn fragments of cobweb. The wound was so deep that it almost reached the man's thigh-bone, all the tattered veins and arteries around it bleeding like crazy.

"I was… trying… to explain." the injured human murmured again.

It appeared that the thread the warrior was muffled in did not only prevent him from moving, but from bleeding as well, serving as a sort of tourniquet to stop his wound, and now that I had disentangled him I had accidentally made it open anew. This was, however honest, a gross mistake of mine, and though this man's life was of no concern to me, I could not help feeling faulty for my lack of attention to his warnings.

"I'm sorry, I didn't…" I tried to apologize to him, but he quickly took me short.

"Don't blame yourself... I never planned to live forever anyway…" he mumbled and drudgingly screwed his livid lips into some kind of a smile as if flabbily attempting to joke. "Listen… I have no idea what you are, creature… but if you're really here to help then you have to save my brothers…"

I wonderingly raised my eyebrow in response to the warrior's entreaty. It was not the first time when a human asked me for help, but again and again this didn't fail to surprise me. What was it about me that made all these pathetic mortals believe they could so simply trust me and even ask me to come to their aid? I used to think that a being of my appearance was supposed to pose only hazard and terror to their kind and not confidence. I wondered if that was some paradox of their nature to despise everyone who was regarded as a stranger to them and at the same time so easily confide into someone they had been knowing for only a couple of minutes.

"Your brothers? What happened to them?" I asked the warrior, getting straight to the point without any excessive wrangling.

Though I had neither time, nor desire to once again get involved into the humans' affairs, now I was forced to admit that I owed this man some retribution for my mistake, and the best way to make it up to him on my part was to accept his request for help.

Besides, I was still up to inquiring him of the building's inward, which I hoped could rather make this benevolent-like act into mutual assistance.

"We spied into the edifice several days ago, intent upon regaining it from the monsters…" the human clucked in reply, swallowing hard after every uttered phrase. "But we… we had no idea there were so many of them… they ambushed us, slaughtering our squadron man by man… capturing everyone they could seize… I tried to run away, but they… they caught me anyway…"

The warrior shrank with his whole face, and then tears came on the verge of his eyes.

"Do you have any idea where they could have taken your brothers?" I asked him, still looking to obtain more relevant information for my own quest.

"No…" he sobbed. "But they have to be somewhere here… they got captured by these ghouls just like I did… they might still be alive… P-please, you have to help! My soul will never find its rest if I let my brothers down…"

I couldn't help but chuckle at the mortal's bare mention of his soul 'finding its rest'. If only he had the slightest notion of what awaited his spirit after he would die, regardless of his good intentions…

"I will do what I can, human." I replied in an assuring tone, seeing that the man was earnest in his desire to save his brethren.

The wounded mortal took a deep sigh of relief after hearing this, his watered eyes for the first time expressing some sort of hopefulness.

"Th-thank you… Thank you, whoever you are, creature…" he began to repeat in a nearly crying voice. "I… I really do wish I could return you this favor…"

"Actually, there _is_ some way for you to do this." I said, interrupting his avalanche of thanksgiving.

The human cast at me a silent look of incomprehension and quizzically knitted his trembling eyebrows together.

"I require some information, and by now you're the only one who can provide me with it." I proceeded.

The warrior frowned at this phrase of mine and then again attempted to force his lips into a wry ironic smile he had given me just seconds away.

"I should have known better than to believe that you're helping me in all sincerity…" he told me sarcastically, a new-born note of distrust sounding in his voice. "But if that's what it takes to have my brothers saved, I'll tell you everything I know…"

The so sudden shift in the man's attitude startled me greatly, but right now I was too focused on business to give heed to this.

"I want you to explain to me how you managed to get on this tier." I spoke to him suspiciously. "I've seen a construction near the pipes that probably once served as an elevator, but it was already destroyed by the time I have discovered it. So how were you able to ascend here then?"

"I could ask you the same thing…" the human replied a bit giggly even despite being little more than half dead.

"I don't have time for jokes, human, and neither do you!" I retorted angrily.

The corners of the warrior's mouth immediately turned down at this line and after clearing his throat he again started speaking in a serious vein.

"When I was running away from these monsters I used the elevator to take a lift upwards in order to distance myself from them…" he began to narrate. "Then I fractured the elevator so they would not reach me… but I… I did not know these creatures could climb up there…"

"Great." I reacted with asperity. "And I guess that this elevator for sure used to be the only way of reaching the summit of the cathedral?"

"It did…" the mortal responded fatefully and a bit bashfully.

I hardly refrained myself from calling this man an idiot. Even taking into account the complexity of the situation he got into, destroying the only means of attaining the cathedral's pinnacle was the stupidest idea one could possibly imagine.

"Then why did you ascend only on this tier and not on a higher one if you were so desperately trying to get away from your chasers?" I continued to inquire him.

My question made the human gulp hard with his eyes beginning to shift uneasily.

"I… I… I cannot tell you that…" he muttered all shivering. "This is a holy secret… I swore to guard it with my life… I… I'm sorry…"

Having my patience exhausted I coarsely grabbed the warrior by the armor plate and pulled him closer to me, staring with my glowing eyes straight into his.

"I'm afraid that right now you are in no best position to choose, mortal one!" I snapped at him. "So either you will have to break your oath or your brothers will become food for vampires!"

The human's orbs again widened fearfully just as they did when he saw me for the first time, but then his glance sweepingly changed to a more scornful one. He turned his face away and pursed his lips as if being disgusted, then sharply looked at me one more time with contempt.

"Fine, I'll speak the truth…" he spat, grinning at me like a dog. "My brothers and I have infiltrated this edifice with one and only aim – to activate the ancient organs and thus clean this place of this vampire scum that has infested it… When I got left alone in this raid, in the names of my brothers I attempted to fulfill the task on my own… so I ascended on this tier to get to the mechanism… here is where it is located… I knew that even if I would not be able to make an escape afterwards, our next squadrons could still recapture the cathedral once it was uncloistered… then and only then we could have a hope for victory in this war…"

The warrior's explanation at once raised a dozen questions in my mind, all striking me simultaneously like a blow.

"The mechanism is located here on this tier?" I asked him again incredulously. "I thought it was the boiler at the bottom of the lower floor that creates vapor, which then starts up the pipes."

"I see you're thoroughly enlightened, creature…" he reacted with little acrimony in his voice. "But the vapor alone cannot produce a sound loud enough to spread across the entire Nosgoth… The mechanism I'm speaking of opens air vents at the bottom of the organs which can amplify the power of the rising vapor a hundred, perhaps thousand times… Only when the air lift becomes that enhanced can the organs send their holy song of doom…"

I listened silently to what the man was telling me, every new detail pushing my conscience to its limits. The mystery of the deadly hymn that I thought I had already unraveled appeared to be a little more complicated than how I pictured it to myself, although I had truly managed to come to grips with the right answer to it. If everything really was as the warrior had described then I still had a chance to reach the topmost tier of the cathedral.

"But what's the point in activating the mechanism now when the pipes are destroyed?" I put another question to him.

"Damaged, not destroyed…" he objected. "As long as at least several organs are still standing, their power can still suffice to liberate the territory of the cathedral from the ghouls' presence… For now it's the most we can at least count on…"

For a second I looked aside in contemplation, while the warrior, being short of his breath, began to have a bad cough. The profuse blood loss must have enervated the mortal so hard that even a short conversation was like a torture to him.

"Has my answer satisfied you at last?" he snorted again with effort.

"Not yet." I returned steadily. "I want you to tell me where exactly I can find this mechanism."

The human's eyes again started getting shifty.

"How do I know you're not going to use this kind of knowledge against my own people?" he asked me with an uptight tang in his voice.

"You don't." I replied coldly. "You remember the deal: you give me the information that I need and I save your brothers. So I guess you have no other choice but to believe me".

The warrior took another deep breath, his Adam's apple nervously going up and down in his throat. Seeing that he was still hesitant to tell me his 'holy secret' I leaned closer to him and nearly whispered him in the face, slowly walking through every word, "_Where is the mechanism?_"

The wounded mortal continued to be silent for several more seconds, but then finally gave up.

"Very well… it is located…" he started talking, when all of a sudden some breezing noise filled the deadly stillness of this place, causing me to switch my attention to it.

"Hush!" I ordered the warrior and anxiously raised the Reaver, turning my head back and forth in search of the source of the rustle.

This time the sound didn't resemble the rattling spidery legs but was more like a sough of the wind blowing from an opened window.

I strained my ears in an attempt to track down the rustle until all at once it got diluted by some odd voices beginning to echo inside my head,

=_You're not welcome here…_=

=_Take your kind with you and leave this holy place…_=

One tone was overflowing into another, all coming out of nowhere as if the place itself was speaking directly into my mind. There seemed as if somebody was projecting the words right into my brain… so much like when using _the Whisper_ ability.

The voices kept on gathering their intensity, getting me more and more distracted and confused.

In order to abstract from the deranging sounds I closed my eyes and sniffed the air with my nose, shifting my concentration to my sense of smell instead.

I instantly detected the distinct scent of several human beings but no signs of vampire's odour whatsoever, which made me question whether it was _the Whisper_ I was hearing now.

The scent also felt rather untypical, like the kind of scent I could not link to any other human I had met before, even different than the one the warrior's body beside me was exuding.

Audibly I was dealing with some hidden agenda here.

"What's going on?" the ensnared man referred to me, his gaze reflecting a mixture of fright and puzzlement.

"Quiet!" I cut him off sternly and then shouted into nowhere, "Whoever you are, show yourself, I know you're here!"

The breezing noise again sounded behind me, and as I swiftly turned around to spot its maker a dagger was already flying through the air right into my face.

It was the instinct forced through centuries of combat that helped me sidestep the whirling blade a fraction of a second before the impact with it.

The swishing weapon hit the distant wall and fell on the floor with a clang, while I immediately turned my eyes to the side from where it was thrown, but only managed to catch sight of some eluding shimmer as if a shadow had just slipped away round the corner.

=_You were warned…_= one of the voices again rang in my head.

At one sweep I bolted toward where I had discerned this shady blink of a movement, the trail of my assailant's smell leading me like a clew.

Whoever these stalkers were they moved very fast, but with such a trenchant tale of scent they were leaving behind themselves I could easily track down their direction.

So I passed round the corner in pursuit of the trail, when all out of the blue a soul-chilling howl broke forth from the previous wing of the passage and halted me.

I skidded to a stop and then at once ran back to the hind part of corridor, but just as I dashed there I realized I was too late: the thigh-wounded human that I had left here was lying on the floor petrified with his hands motionlessly clasped around his neck.

His face was even paler than before and his eyes had frozen in a glazy glance of agony.

Two dark bloody patches were splattered around his head and traveling down the floor to his feet.

The warrior had just been murdered.

The shocking spectacle left me standing like a statue for a second or two, but then I came to myself and rapidly approached the warrior's dead body.

In a closer look I saw that his throat had been cut literally from ear to ear, blood trilling down his front armor.

Beyond all doubt this had been nothing but a set-up: one of those shadowers was expressly sidetracking me, while the other one used this distraction of mine to kill the warrior and then disappear. There could be only one possible explanation - they didn't want him to tell me the exact location of the mechanism, which is why they ambushed us before he even managed to finish his last sentence. I should have known better than to leave him here alone, but my impetuosity had once again caused me to act heedlessly.

It was another foolish mistake of mine, and this time it had cost this man's life.

A yellow shining ball of energy rose above the human's corpse and started flying around me, illuminating the dark space of the corridor with its spiritual light. This was the warrior's soul, finally released from his body after the long torment he had just endured.

I looked at the dashing comet-like shape of this spark and took thought: ever since I was resurrected I had not even once devoured a mortal's spirit - not because I was purposely avoiding this, but rather because there had not simply been such a need.

Right now there was neither the need, nor the desire of mine to do so, and yet I knew too well that letting the warrior's soul escape into the spirit world would not set it free, but only condemn it to a fate far worse than oblivion.

Although this human was doomed anyway, I still bore the fault for failing to protect him when he was defenseless, and perhaps only spinning his spirit into the cycle of life, death and rebirth could at least partly make reparation for my wrong.

I had no idea how exactly this whole mechanism of the Wheel of Fate worked, but it was the only hope that once the warrior's soul was absorbed by me it could have a chance for reincarnation, and maybe, just maybe, this man's next life would be a better one.

"The Wheel must turn…" I fatefully said to myself and held away the shoulder cape from my jaw.

The soul tortuously flew up through the air into my maw and disappeared there, the Reaver's flaming blade as always twitching in response to the feeding like a candle's light.

The warrior's cadaver, however, remained lying on the ground without any alterations – unlike the corrupted vampiric carcasses the human corporeal shells did not burn away even after their spiritual essences left them.

Now the human's spirit was truly released, and even if it was not released, it was at least safe from becoming the wanderer of the world of the dead.

Feeling an odd combination of desolation and relief I took a deep sigh and shifted my thoughts to my next move.

Now I had to track down those assassins and find out who they were and what they were so desperately trying to hide from me. I knew I promised the warrior that I would seek out his entrapped brothers first, but until I had the other secrets unthreaded this task was like a needle in a haystack for me.

The only problem was that the odour of those stalkers had already dissolved in the air and I had to devise another way of spying them out.

In search of a hint I cast another glance at the human's dead body and noticed several tiny bloodspots on the floor near it that stretched forth to the hind part of the corridor.

Apparently the killer managed to escape unseen, but failed to do this clear, and now this trail of blood he had left was my clew to him.

Wasting no time I darted round the corner, heading back to the open area of the tier. This way was a dead-end and therefore the assassin could not have run too far away.

As I stepped out of the passage my nostrils again reflexively dilated in reaction to the already familiar smell. There it was, the tell tail scent of one of those assassins, and this time it was coming from somewhere close round.

I started turning my head back forth, trying to catch sight of the lurking presence in the darkness, but once again I was the first to get descried: on the spur of the moment somebody jumped on me from behind, gruffly gripping me around the neck in an attempt to jugulate me with a dagger.

The blade, however, only barely cut through the tissue of my cowl without touching my flesh – the assailant was unaware that I was missing the lower jaw together with the throat.

Using the sloppiness of the instant I seized the attacker by the arm and hit him in the stomach with my right elbow.

The blow forced the attacker to release its hold of my neck, as I nimbly turned around and blindly shot forth my right hand, aiming for a clutching move.

Luckily I found my talons to seize the shadower right by the throat and as they did, I furiously picked him up high above the ground.

The assassin dropped the dagger and started snatching at my left hand, trying to ease the grip, until I rudely slammed his body into the wall behind, immobilizing him.

Once the assassin held still, I lastly managed to properly examine his appearance: he wore a blood-red robe with golden trims carrying different runic symbols and a decorated golden belt. His boots, greaves and gauntlets were golden as well. The only part of the killer's vestment that was not made of gold was the mask that covered his face – it seemed to be made of iron and had only two circular trenches for eyes and a weird sick-looking carving beneath them in the form of a smiling mouth.

Through the eyelets in the mask I discerned the shadower's eyes and skin and reassured myself that he truly was a human.

Yet something here patently did not hang together.

What could a mortal possibly be doing here, in a place that was infested with vampires from top to toe, unless only he was not a vampire hunter?

And why would he then kill someone of his own kind?

And, most importantly, what were those voices that I was hearing in the corridor?

Encompassed by all those questions I raised the sword and aimed with it at my assailant, the Reaver's nib burning an inch away from his masked face.

"Who are you? Why did you kill that man?" I asked him menacingly. "Answer me, now!"

The assassin began to fling hectically and murmur something in some strange language that was completely unfamiliar to me. I thought he was simply trying to befool me, pretending to be a foreign-speaker, and this got me even more enraged.

"You'd better stark talking so that I could understand you!" I snarled at him and squeezed my claws around his throat a bit tighter, causing the cartilages in his neck to ominously crackle. "Quickly, or I will reap your worthless soul!"

The masked human gasped and looked at me with eyes full of unfeigned terror, but still continued to mumble in his unintelligible language.

At first I even attempted to listen attentively to his speech and make out some words, but very soon realized it was futile and got rabid at him again.

With revulsion I rampantly drove my foot into his left greave and started pressing it with force against the wall.

The man's armor quickly gave way under my strength and then I heard his knee-joint snap.

The assassin cried out in pain and fell unconscious, my hand that held him by the throat sensing his whole body growing flabby.

I gazed at him one last time, now realizing that perhaps he could really speak only the way he did, otherwise he would have already told me everything plainly. But now this no longer mattered.

Sick and tired of this unsuccessful interrogation I roughly pulled the assassin's limped husk onto the wraith blade, impaling him straight through the chest.

The mortal whimpered and slowly slid off the flaming sword to the ground, the air becoming filled with the smell of burning silk and flesh.

As the dying carcass hit the floor I saw it beginning to turn to ashes just like that of a vampire when it was bereaved of its soul. There appeared that this human had somehow fallen under the influence of the corruption as well, but the likelihood of such an occurrence was hardly believable.

To inherit the Nupraprtor's poison one had to have at least some degree of kindred to the vampire race, in other words, to the clans.

But what kind of connection could there be between my former family and this or any other mortal?

This case was obviously far from clear yet.

In a few seconds there was already nothing left of the cindering assassin's body but a pile of steaming clothes and a mask.

I leaned over the remains of his former vestment and focused my attention on those runes pictured on the trims of his robe. Since I was no scholar I could not translate them, but as far as I could judge they definitely belonged to the written language of the vampires.

This conclusion made me wonder how such symbols could have possibly appeared on a human's garment. There could be no way that the mortals were competent in vampiric script, especially in such a specific one even a former vampire like me did not master… unless only they were not servants of the vampires themselves.

As I arrived at this idea I immediately recalled the conversation between those vampire hunters near the cathedral. They mentioned some "vampire worshippers" attacking them along with the Zephonim when they tried to besiege this pandemonium.

Could it be that these assassins I was dealing with now ranged among them?

And if they did, how did they manage to survive here in such a close vicinity to entire hordes of hungry demented ghouls?

Regardless of their worshipping the vampires or not the children of my brother were no longer sentient beings, but merely animal-like predators that did not distinct between an ally and a foe when it came to their appetites.

There were way too many mismatches in this story, and I felt nearly compelled to casting some light on them.

Unfortunately the killer whose spirit was now vested in me failed to divulge any information that could help me make further progress in this mystery.

My only option now was to trace the other assassin and just hope that he would be more amenable.


	4. Chapter 4: Vampire Worshippers

**Vampire Worshippers**

In pursuit of the other assassin I ran back through the corridor where our first meeting with him and his partner took place.

While running I could not help taking a rapid glimpse at the corpse of the warrior on the floor that got killed by them because of my sluggishness.

Now his dead body was lying there, being nothing more than an empty shell of his former self, a useless combination of rotting flesh and bones that would soon become a lucky piece of carrion for one of the ghouls that inhabited this place.

Yet this was hardly of any importance anymore. What _was_ important was that the warrior's soul was free now - free from the agony of this life and from the madness of the world of the dead that could have run it down had I not devoured his spirit after his death.

But even this kind of act had not yet fully redeemed my debt to him. The human told me that his soul would only find its rest if his brothers would be rescued and I promised him that I would do what I can to make that happen.

I still didn't really know why I accepted his request for help while already having more important and urgent things to do. It was not some sympathy or compassion on my part, of that I was certain. After becoming a wraith my indifferent attitude to the humans had not changed a bit, and even now I had a steadfast feeling that it probably never _would_ change. Even my desire to make it up for him after my fatal mistake was rather an excuse than a true reason for doing this.

Perhaps what was truly guiding me in aiding this man was the fact that even on the edge of his own death he was thinking not of himself, but of his siblings, his flesh and blood – something my own brethren didn't do for me when I needed it most. Maybe this was the kind of a deed that gained my respect and made me feel this human deserved my help.

But before I could start searching for the mortal's brothers I had to track down the second stalker.

Some instinct inside me was telling me that the attack on that warrior in the corridor was not a spontaneous one - everything was too well orchestrated and executed to be a mere fortuity. Someway the assassins had to know about my presence in the cathedral and about my attempts to acquire information on the mechanism that activated the pipes. And if that suspicion of mine was correct that they had to know whether the warrior's brothers were still alive and where exactly they were held.

Unfortunately the assassin I was chasing now didn't leave any traces in contrast to his predecessor, which greatly complicated my task. However, the passage I was crossing now was not at least a subdivided one, so I hoped that it would eventually bring me to the very location where this lurker could be hiding from me at the moment.

The passage-way turned out to be shorter than I expected and ended before I even got bored of running through it.

But what was even more unexpected was that it ended leading me nowhere.

At the end of it were no doors, windows, stairs, ledges or cornices, only bare walls that surrounded me from all sides.

What kind of a joke could it be?

Why would the cathedral's architects have designed a dead-end corridor here?

This did not make any sense.

Besides, the assassin I was following now could not have just vanished from here into thin air.

Presumably there had to be some secret doorway around or some other crypt that could grant me the entry.

I began to palpate the walls around me in search of some kind of a hidden lock or an embrasure, trying not to miss a single brick or crevice. No way could this be a dead-end passage; I was sure the exit had to be somewhere around, I just needed to look for it.

So I continued to touch every inch of fundament I could reach until one brick finally gave way with a click.

The corridor immediately filled with distinctive gnashing noise of some concealed working mechanism as I happily realized that my guess about the secret doorway was correct.

I reverted eyes and saw a huge aperture beginning to open in the wall at the distance of about thirty feet behind me.

Quick off the mark I flashed toward the new-opened pass, but just as my hand slipped off the triggering brick it clicked back into its place with the wall promptly swinging shut. I returned to the switch and pressed it one more time, then tried to run up to the pass before it closed, but again to no avail – the mechanism worked too fast and the distance between the trigger and the opening was too long for me to make it in time. Apparently this whole system was deliberately engineered in such a way that the doorway could stay opened only when the switch remained pressed. I had to find a way to duplicate this effect and thus solve this puzzle.

I started pacing about the corridor's wing, studying everything around me and trying to generate the key to this riddle.

The first idea to have crossed my mind was to crush the triggering brick so it would stop clicking back into its place and activating the closing of the aperture. This, however, would not be very smart and, moreover, safe for the mechanism, so I continued to think further.

Obviously the aim of this system was to make sure that it could only be used effectively with the participation of more than one person, perhaps in order to prevent those who were not resident in the edifice from infiltrating this area.

Somehow I had to be present literally in two places at the same time.

Of course, I was no magician to pull off such tricks, but as a wraith I did possess some extraordinary abilities, and one of those was the ability to shift between dimensions.

As soon as this thought formed in my mind I lastly perceived what I had to do now. Infused with determination I pressed the brick again and instantly released the matter around my frame, taking a swift dip into the spectral realm.

As the world submerged into the distorting blue haze of the spirit world, reality froze and so did all the material objects, including the brick that I pressed. My plan worked without a single hitch and now the mechanism stood still with the aperture in the wall remaining opened all the time.

Without skipping a beat I went through the pass and entered the secret room that lay beyond it.

The room turned out to be small and empty; the only thing occupying its space was the removed fragment of the wall that used to block my path to it in the material realm.

I walked round the bricked block and observed the chamber's interior: there were two passage-ways along the edges of the distant wall, each one having no door, which was a fortune, since physical objects were immovable in the spirit world.

I didn't know which way was the right to go and relied on pure intuition, instinctively choosing the left one.

Entering the left passage-way got me cross another long and tortuous corridor, which brought me into a large oval hall with four spiraled columns surrounded in the middle of it like this was some kind of arena.

Dozens of souls were swarming about the place, but no sluagh or vampire wraiths could be seen here, which was certainly pleasurable, though rather strange.

The portal to the material dimension was flaring in the very center of the hall, so I hastened to step on it, preliminary having devoured all the spirits within the premise. In the world of the dead my hunger kept on troubling me even despite the Reaver's manifestation, so a feast of so many souls felt incredibly satisfying.

Once I was satiated I plunged into the burning-white circle of the conduit, starting to recollect the substance around my body.

The shapes, colors, and smells of the real world enshrouded me anew, and just as I completely emerged there I instantly sensed that I was no longer the only being present in this hall.

Mysterious figures began to move toward me out of the cover of darkness, the shadowy shimmer of their robes betraying their identities. When my eyes got used to the gloom and started discerning their features, I realized that those were the very assassins I had been after all this time.

At first only several of them crept out of the obscurity, but gradually more and more started coming out from every side, all armed to the teeth and approaching me almost in unison.

Most of them had the same red and golden garment and iron masks I had previously seen on the lurker in the corridor; however, four assassins wore grey robes with red trims, collars and belts, iron gauntlets and golden boots and were armed with staves instead of daggers, also golden. Their masks looked a bit different too: they had some red circles pictured around left eyelets, but missed those sick-looking carvings of smiling mouths beneath. I had no clue what was the idea behind all these differences in their vestment but had a strong foreboding I was about to find that out.

I glanced around me, briefly counting about fourteen thugs slowly moving in my direction with their weapons at the ready. For some reason my apparition did not seem to be a surprise to these humans, and now they behaved as if they designedly had me trapped here in the very heart of their lair.

I raised the sword in defense, preparing to thwart the upcoming attack, but suddenly an unknown impulse ran through my right hand and the wraith blade sputtered out and retracted, the wisps of its energy receding completely. My body at once got enwrapped by the familiar sense of fragility as I alarmingly looked at my right arm, trying to understand what was going on.

The presence of the Reaver somewhere deep inside me was still quite perceptible, but its material form was missing. There seemed as if I had just got injured and thus lost its projection, but someway somehow did not notice that happen.

The absence of pain could be confusing after all, but no way could I have failed to sense being hit, even slightly.

Something here clearly felt wrong.

I began to gaze around and above, endeavoring to keep in view any sign of a movement around me, until my attention got captured by some bright red glowing coming from the darkness behind them.

The glowing kept on drawing closer and closer to the light before the first contours of some human figure appeared on the dark background in the rear and it became discernable that the gleaming was produced by a red radiating amulet strapped around the figure's neck.

As the owner of this ornament fully stepped out the gloom I saw that it was another masked assassin, the amulet proudly hanging on his chest, attached to a thin golden chain. He was about a head taller than the other warriors that stood before him and in his hands he held two iron bludgeons with spikes.

But these bludgeons and the gem he wore were not the only distinctions about his appearance: his snow-white knee-length clothing had no sleeves and thus looked more like a toga than a robe, exposing his well-muscled arms and legs. This toga, if it was the right way to call it, was decorated with red trims and a red belt, all carrying numerous vampiric runes. The assassin's gauntlets and boots were golden, and so was his mask that had a carving of a sad turned-down mouth instead of a smiling one.

His eyes, nonetheless, did not seem to be sad at all, and as they met mine I recognized this painfully familiar look of fright, astonishment and curiosity that I always got from the humans that beheld me for the first time.

"Heretic!" he exclaimed, referring to me, and stepped in front of two other red-robed assassins. "Welcome to your undoing! Your sorcery is useless in this holy place."

He was speaking with a strange accent, the kind of I had never heard before neither from the vampires, nor from the humans.

"We are the Brothers of Darkness, sent here by our Demigod Zephon." he proceeded. "Your blasphemous intrusion will stop right here!"

'Heretic'… 'Demigod'… 'blasphemous'… I had to inwardly repeat all these words to myself before I could truly perceive their sense. At last all the segmented pieces of suspicions and assumptions in my mind had begun to come together into one whole picture, but that picture was not a beautiful one.

"So it is true…" I resumed aloud. "You are the vampire worshippers."

I made a short pause after this conclusion then added mockingly, "My brother must be really going through hard times now if he sends mortals to fight me."

"How dare you speak so of our noble Lord, foul beast?!" exploded the man that appeared to be the leader of these worshippers. "Wretched creature, you once was a god of the high-borne then fell from grace because of your betrayal! You deserve to die and death we shall grant you! Prepare yourself!"

As he finished this line, the four grey-robed worshippers with staves encircled me tightly and brandished at me with their weapons. The other row of worshippers behind the golden-masked warrior began to threatingly pace in my direction as well, but I remained standing nonchalantly still, firstly looking to continuing my conversation with their leader.

"Hold it, mortal!" I addressed myself to him. "Before I rip apart you and your laughable Brotherhood I would like to ask you one thing."

The worshipper gave me a glance of haughtiness and halted his approaching brethren with a fluent gesture of his arm.

"Why?" I asked him with no further elucidations.

Silence ensued after this question of mine as the warrior responded by quizzically knitting his eyebrows together. Some of the worshippers around him also exchanged uncomprehending looks.

"Why what?" he asked me in return, his voice already sounding not as confident as it was just seconds away.

"Why are you doing all this?" I elaborated. "Why are you turning on the ones of your own kind only to serve a race of imbecile mutated ghouls? Why are you willfully becoming slaves to the creatures that can only treat you as cattle of animals to feed on?"

I saw how the leader's eyes became bloodshot at these phrases of mine, his hands furiously tightening on the bludgeons they held.

"I've heard stories of the humans worshipping the vampires as gods before," I continued my tirade. "But never before in my entire existence have I ever heard or witnessed something more unreasonable and perverted than this! And so I wonder: why? Why are you doing this? What is the reason? Simply fear? Or maybe coercion? Or deception? Please tell me what it is."

Even though the expression on the man's face was hidden by the mask his stance and posture clearly bespoke him to be hardly refraining from throwing at me right away, as were now his brethren that only awaited his order.

"You are a deceitful, benighted abomination!" he snarled at me, his accent even becoming less notable due to the angered voice. "You do not understand anything! We are the servants of gods, the holy priests of Nosgoth, the conduits of the high vampiric wisdom! We were granted with the privilege of sacrificing our blood and the blood of our enemies to our deities, the true masters of this world! We have the honor of sustaining the lives of our Lords and protecting them from the faithless scum like you, and in return they mercifully reward us with the Dark Gifts of the high-borne!"

I stood motionlessly, listening attentively to the worshipper's speech and poring over each phrase and word he uttered. Suddenly I felt the laughter bubbling up inside me so that I could not even help it. Everything the human was telling me sounded so ridiculously pathetic and naïve it almost felt as if listening to some silly indistinct babble of a little child.

As the laughter overflowed me at last I swung my head up and let it all out. I began to laugh loudly and hysterically, roaring with a cackle that had to sound nearly insane.

The four grey-robed warriors that surrounded me were so discouraged by my reaction that even lowered their staves a bit, but I was heedless of them at that moment and still continued to laugh, almost falling back in my humor.

It was some time before the leader of their pack finally interrupted my gales of guffaw.

"What are you laughing at, you vile wretch?!" he growled in contempt.

Only after his question I barely managed to catch my breath and get myself back under control.

"Servants? Priests? Conduits?" I scoffed in reply, my chest heaving from the effort not to burst out laughing again. "Oh no, I'll tell you who you _truly_ are - cowards! A bunch of despicable, unworthy, yellow-bellied cowards! I've never had any high opinion of the humanity, but you without a shadow of a doubt prove to be the worst and the feeblest of your kind. Even the vampire hunters that have been hounding my former race for centuries have more dignity than you. I think I will even enjoy tearing you all asunder."

The golden-masked worshipper flourished with both his arms on the rampage, his eyes burning with anger almost as strong as that ruby-colored amulet around his neck.

"Heretic, your godless affronts to us and to our religion shall not go unpunished!" he bawled out and then turned to his brethren, pointing at me with his right bludgeon. "Attack this creature, brothers! Show no mercy! Reduce its tortured carcass to sheds!"

As the leader gave the command, the other warriors immediately moved a peg and unflinchingly advanced on me. Chorally and synchronically they all started chanting the words, "_Tod dem Gottlose!_"

This was the language of the ancient vampires, almost unspoken nowadays and used only to grant names to towns and people, but I still knew enough of it to understand the meaning of these words. 'Death to the heathen' – that was how this phrase translated.

The intentions of these mortals, however, were pretty clear even without any knowledge of the ancient tongues and I was perfectly aware of what was awaiting me now: I would have to face their whole sect at once in one combat, being critically outnumbered and deprived of the Reaver's power.

Though these zealots were nothing more than mere humans and axiomatically no match for me, the way they stripped me off the blade's manifestation was an admonition that I should not underestimate them. Apparently it was some sort of magic or artifact they were using on me to bind the wraith blade inside my frame, but if and how it was possible was a far less fathomable mystery.

I had to be extremely attentive while battling these religionists if I wanted to unveil their secret weapon.

The four grey-robed warriors continued restraining me in the middle of the hall with their staves while the rest already headed toward me from the periphery. Using the tactics of abruptness I sharply clutched at the two pikes that were aimed at me and simultaneously jerked them asunder, knocking together both worshippers holding them heads first.

As the humans got stunned and relinquished the grip of their staves I violently half span myself and tried to chip another worshipper behind me off his feet with the whipped-out weapons.

To my amazement he managed to deftly jump out of the blow's way, then dashed back at me forthwith.

I quickly dropped one stave and blocked his thunderous attack with the other one, my pike clenching with his, then kicked him with my foot into the stomach.

The iron-masked human bounced back by about ten feet away from me, as I sharply turned around only to see the fourth warrior already lunging at me with his stave outstretched.

The mortal's pounce was too fast to evade and his thrust stroke me right into the middle of my sternum.

Though the weapon was blunt and could not pierce my flesh the impact was still powerful enough to sweep me off my feet, throwing me far backwards. The speed and strength of these worshippers abundantly superseded those of ordinary humans, so perhaps their leader did not lie when he said that the vampires they served shared some of their power with them.

I tumbled across the ground, sinking my talons into the stone floor to slow the momentum before I managed to right myself.

As I looked up I saw the worshipper in front of me preparing for another assault, his leader standing behind him passive, but visibly triumphant.

"Without your unholy weapon to back you up, you are nothing!" the golden-masked worshipper roared at me, making a cutting gesture with one of his bludgeons.

After these words the grey-robed warrior dexterously twirled his weapon across the air, demonstrating his adeptness, and then jumped at me again in an attempt to capitalize on his previous assault.

Having harnessed my powers I danced away from the man's stave then yarely caught it with both hands as it hammered past me, swinging it back and slamming the worshipper holding it right into the wall behind.

The warrior's ribs loudly cracked from impact and his limped body slid down the bricked fundament like a square of silk cloth. Despite the enhanced physical abilities these mortals' frames still retained their inborn anthropic weakness, so one powerful shot from a superior creature like me was enough to shatter their fragile bones.

Gripping a tighter hold of the stave I had snatched out of the worshipper's hands I turned to the right and saw three red-robed zealots with daggers racing toward me.

Without tarrying a second I took a running leap high into the air then dove at the warriors with the pike ready for a broad swing.

The religionists adroitly sidestepped my onrush, all three skipping aside in different directions and surrounding me in a triangle.

As I landed on the ground they simultaneously threw at me their daggers, each one cunningly aimed at a different part of my body.

In a fraction of a second I rolled away from three winging weapons, but when I gathered up I realized it was only a prelude to another string of propelling blades. Two more daggers swished through the air into me, one barely missing my head but the second one getting right into my left shoulder. This caused my vision to go white for a split second until I shook myself free out of this daze.

As my sight cleared the first thing to come into my view was one of the worshippers lashing at me with his dagger aimed at my neck.

At the nick of time I dropped the stave and caught the mortal's hand in mid-air, the blade stopping an inch away from where once was my carotid artery. Then I starkly took the dagger out of my shoulder and plunged it into the warrior's heart.

The worshipper yawped and fell headlong, his soul breaking free into the air. I reflexively drew down my cowl and swallowed it, restoring the expended soul energy and healing the cut from the dagger.

The Soul Reaver, nevertheless, would still not manifest itself from my right arm, which indicated that there was something else here _other_ than physical wounding that was suppressing its projection.

I squinted back at the humans behind me and found their whole sect standing nearly congealed and staring at me in torpor. The reason for their shock was quite understandable: my act of devouring the soul of their brother had just been revealed to them and the spectacle for sure had to feel dismaying for their weakened hearts.

"You ravenous creature!" their leader screamed at me after a moment of stillness, a note of confusion in his voice becoming more audible.

The loud outcry of the golden-masked worshipper must have brought the rest of the warriors back to themselves and after hearing it the two red-robed zealots before me immediately darted at me again.

This time my reaction was faster and I trippingly rolled past them, concurrently picking up from the floor two dropped daggers and at once throwing them at the worshippers before they managed to dodge.

Two more liberated souls momentarily invaded the hall's space as I already prepared to imbibe them when all of a sudden another mortal jumped on me from behind, bracing a stave around my missing throat as if trying to choke me.

I started fidgeting hither and yon in an attempt to drop him off me until my eyes got fixed on a group of four worshippers scorching toward me, three of them armed with twinned daggers and one holding a stave.

At the sight of this I roughly grabbed the pike around my neck and swung it forward, tossing the human on my back at the impending warriors and knocking down all three with daggers, the weapon still remaining clasped in my hands.

The one with a stave that escaped unharmed approached me straight after and began to exchange blows with me, our weapons clashing sullenly.

After successfully blocking all his attacks I delivered a scoop jab with my pike right into his solar plexus, making him crumble to the ground in a fetal position. Only now I noticed that this warrior's mask had a wide dent on the forehead area, which indicated that he was one of those two I took down at the very beginning of the brawl. Apparently he somehow managed to regain consciousness after that, but for this once I left him no second chance, momentarily leaning over his gnarled carcass and tearing open his throat with my talons.

The knocked-down worshippers to the left of me slowly began to recover themselves, so I again had to delay my feeding, leaving the soul of the man I had just dismantled hover in the air and descending upon them instead.

I discharged a storm of whirlwind shots on these four, crushing their frail skulls, ribs and joints with everything I had.

One of them still managed to distance himself from my raging onslaught and responded with another pair of daggers cast forth into my face.

I beat back both blades with a single stave swipe, the power of the blow redirecting one right back into his chest.

Without skipping an instant I removed the cape from my jaw to absorb all the spiritual essences in this hall at one time, but only a single energy flock would get magnetized into my gaping maw – the liberated souls of the other dead warriors had already escaped into the spectral realm by that moment.

"Enjoy your eternal damnation then." I archly said at the back of my mind and put back my cowl.

After relishing the evanescent moment of saturation I looked about me, studying the scenery of the carnage I had created: six humans were lying on the floor, three of them dead and three looking as if still breathing, but battered and bruised nearly senseless. Several more were weakly grabbling on their hands and knees, trying to return to their feet after the beating.

The warrior in white toga and golden mask continued standing passive in-between the columns in the middle of the hall, five red-robed worshippers by his side that had not yet entered the fight hesitatingly snuggling up to each other.

"What are you waiting for, cretins?!" he yelled at them, nervously turning his head to me, then to his brethren and then again to me. "Attack, now!"

With a notable grain of vacillation the zealots divided in two groups and started spreading across the hall's periphery, surrounding me from all sides. Since they all were armed with daggers their strategy was quite transparent: they wanted to form a whole closed ring around me and attack me distantly with their blades - not very much inventive, but implicitly effective due to their numerical advantage over me.

Even if I lunged at one of their groups headlong and managed to slain it on impulse, the other one would still have more than enough time to stab a good dozen knives into me.

If only I had something to eclipse my body while fighting them, then I would easily take down them all one by one.

Suddenly a vicious idea struck me when I looked at the unconscious bulk of the worshipper lying at my feet.

With this new-born scheme of action arisen in my mind I rabidly forced my left-hand claws into his spine, burrowing them close around his backbone.

The mortal gave an agonizing animalistic shriek as I tore through his back-muscles and reached for his spinal column, grabbing it like a hilt. Then I lifted the man's husk by the backbone and held it before me as if it was a shield, blood and gore from the wound in his spine profusely running down my arm.

The other warriors goggled at this action of mine in macabre surprise, probably not yet understanding the purpose of such barbaric way of mutilation.

But as the first pair of daggers winged its way to me through the air and found the worshipper's cadaver I shot forth at it, the humans had finally perceived that their brother's dead body was simply being used by me as a shield.

More daggers flew at me from multiple directions, as I frantically twisted left and right, blocking them all with the warrior's corpse in my hand.

The worshippers seemed to be darting their blades at me rather desperately than knowingly, as if already having conceived it was useless, but still feeling compelled to attempt for at least something.

When the fifth dagger stuck squelch in my 'human shield', the volley of knives ceased for short while and I managed to take a rapid glimpse around me at last. Each mortal had only one dagger left in his hand, but this time none of them hastened to throw them at me – after discovering the futility of this tactic they distinctly knew better than to waste their last remaining means of battling me for nothing. The only option they had now was to face me in a close combat, and though I was no mind reader I had a strong sensation they were thinking exactly the same thing at the moment.

In a few moments one worshipper lashed at me from the left, his moves blistering and fugitive like a breath of wind. He tried to run behind my back and stab me almost by surprise, but I had his plan unraveled in a trice and quickly pulled one dagger out of the cadaver I held, countering the man's sneak stack by drawing the blade into his abdomen.

Another zealot bolted from the right, as I brusquely turned around and dissected his throat with the same dagger, the mortal's head almost falling off from his neck in a brutal fountain of blood.

Three more then came from the center, one of them bursting forth and vertically bringing down his dagger on me.

I parried the shot and bashed the warrior with the devitalized husk in my hand, sending him flying heels over head.

The other two surged forward right after him, both bringing forth their knives toward my chest.

In the dying second I covered myself with the corpse-made shield, the blades meeting the dead flesh on their way instead. I bowed and sweep-kicked both worshippers at one throw then turned to the one I had just knocked flat and finished him off with the thrown dagger before he even managed to rise from his knees.

As I peeped backwards I saw one of the whipped-off religionists feebly crouching to me on all fours in an attempt to reach for the dropped dagger that lied by my left foot. The warrior was about to grab the weapon but the moment he spotted my eyes set on him he frightenedly staggered back and fled for dear life, his disarmed fellow almost instantly following the lead.

When they ran past the golden-masked worshipper he drastically swung round and hit them both to the unprotected backs of their heads with his bludgeons, the heavy spiked weapons tearing massive pieces of bloodied flesh from their skulls.

"Fear has no place in the Brotherhood, bastards." he muttered with contempt at their decimated carcasses and then set his masked face toward me.

Though he disapproved his fellows of lacking courage, his body language explicitly betrayed him to be in terror as well. Indubitably he had been trying to avoid facing me to the utmost, but now that all his brothers around him were defeated he was the last man standing in this skirmish against me.

Seeing how his whole composure cravenly shook at the sight of me standing tall over his entire sect I decided to add some oil to the flames and insolently tossed his sibling's dead body I had been using as a shield at his feet then lowered my cowl and consumed all the souls that still milled around the hall.

As several cadavers about him burned away after the loss of their spiritual content the leader of the worshippers shockingly shrank backwards and began to nervously shake his head as if saying 'no' to what was going on before him.

"I cannot believe they fought so poorly!" he grumbled, fiercely trying to sound not as intimidated as he really was. "We have divested you of your weapon! You were not supposed to stand a chance!"

His voice was already at shouting pitch as if he was gradually fretting gizzard.

"No, I will not let my masters down like these weaklings did!" he proceeded hysterically. "I do not need their help to bring an end to your blasphemous existence! I will exterminate your kind all by myself and will be alone rewarded with the full share of the Dark Gift by my Gods! Tod dem Gottlose!"

On this note the golden-masked worshipper took a long lightning-fast jump at me with his bludgeons swung behind his neck for a vertical attack.

I ably sidestepped the swoop as he landed several feet away from me, his weapons hitting the concrete and leaving dents in it.

With no protraction the warrior charged at me again and began to take multiple whishes at me, the spiked truncheons grimly whistling through the air inches from my head. Evidently he did not become the leader of the worshippers' sect for nothing – among all the zealots I had already faced his moves were patently the swiftest and the deadliest. But now that it had become a one on one struggle I could easily think his every move ahead and timely duck from all his shots.

Just when the religionist's onset nearly nailed me against the wall behind I sprang aside and punched him in his masked face, my right-hand talons purposely balled into a fist.

The leader of the worshippers thudded to the ground, his golden mask rumpling from the blow and falling off his face.

I knew I could have plainly struck him with my claws unclenched and thus finish him for good, but first I wished to interrogate him, and for that I needed him to stay alive.

The unmasked warrior clutched at his head and drudgingly raised himself upon an elbow, his exposed nose and mouth shedding blood like water. Then he spat out several knocked-out teeth and attempted to stand up straight, but reeled in an instant, almost falling down again. Albeit I tried not to hit him to the full extent of my power my punch must have still got his flimsy skull concussed.

Nevertheless the human would not give in and made another effort to assault me. But due to the injury his moves were no longer as agile and stinging as before, so I cheaply caught his blow-aimed left arm by the wrist and bent his elbow-joint invertedly, breaking it open with bones issuing forward in a spurt of gore.

The leader of the zealots squealed in pain and reflexively dropped his left bludgeon, as I heavily lodged my knee into his stomach, making him collapse to the ground and drop the other one.

Once the mortal's body hit the floor I quickly put my foot on his good arm, pinning it to the concrete, and strongly grabbed him by the throat. He started struggling convulsively, trying to break free, but I was too strong for him and he soon held still. Once he did, I leaned closer to him and looked him in the eyes, the tips of my talons digging tightly into his muscled neck.

"My master Zephon will have you punished for this, heathen!" he asserted in a gasping voice. "His virulent wrath will be turned on you for your…"

"Your master will join you in hell sooner than you expect," I interrupted him tartly, becoming sick of his fanatical groveling. "Unless only you tell me everything I'll ask you about."

There was a flash of conflicting emotions on the mortal's blood-smeared face after that phrase, but the anger had won out.

"I'm not telling you anything, loathsome spawn!" he spat. "I will not become a traitor to my Gods like you!"

"I was never a traitor, human, but the one who got betrayed." I replied malignly and tightened my grip on his throat. "As for your so-called 'Gods', they could not care less about you and your pitiful loyalty to them. They're simply incapable of that. They're nothing but brute, devolved animals now and they will not have a flicker of mercy for your people once their appetites grow further. Now answer my questions, mortal, or I swear I will make your nugatory soul go through an eternity of suffering!"

For a moment the man's gaze reflected some shade of cognition as if his mind had finally begun to burst through this wall of bigotry blocking its conscience, but then he scowled in rage again, giving me to understand that his 'faith' in his vampire idols was unwavering.

"I will not listen to your profane lies, heretic!" he retorted, his speech stifled because of my talons squeezing his neck. "You are an ungodly demon! Your mere existence is offensive to my noble religion! Kill me if you want, creature, but I will not speak!"

"Very well, _thy will be done._" I returned acidly and took a swing with my left arm, looking for the fatal blow, when my eyes abruptly got bent on the blood-red amulet glowing on the worshippers' chest.

I stopped for an instant and narrowed my lids on the gem that now burned almost as bright as fire, looking like it was seconds away from erupting.

The attire's flamboyant outward made me ponder into thoughts and recall that the first time I saw it was the very same moment I lost the Reaver's projection, which did not seem to be a coincidence.

Once I grasped this piece of memory I firmly snatched at the amulet and tore it off the golden chain it was attached to. The warrior shuddered at this and started struggling anew to kick out of my grip, his flinging feeling even more energetic than when I brought him down earlier.

"Give it back, you thief!" he clucked with a distorted grimace of resisting on his face. "This stone connects my mind with my Priestess! It doesn't belong to you!"

"Your Priestess?" I asked again then tauntingly raised the radiating gem right before his eyes in a slow and relaxed gesture. "Then if your mind is still connected to her, give her my best regards and say that she'd better keep herself out of my way in the future if she doesn't want to share your fate."

After this line I severely squashed the amulet with my talons, crushing it into a crumb of sand-like glass dust.

The pulverized shatters cascaded from my palm down to the ground with a small pink weft beginning to rise into the air from between my claws.

The spectacle made the human freeze in dismay, his skin going pale and becoming nearly as white as the toga he wore, but that was nothing compared to his reaction when all out of nowhere the Soul Reaver disruptively recoiled from my right arm in a dazzling spark of spiritual light like a blast of fire from a dragon's mouth.

In a single heartbeat almost the entire hall's space got illuminated by the sword's flaring corpus as I felt the matter around my astral frame sloughing off the decay that had been tormenting me up until this moment.

All along it had been the worshipper's amulet that somehow restrained the Reaver within me and now with the artifact destroyed the wraith blade's energy had once again become unbound.

Full of admiration and delight I looked at my revived weapon and its newly manifested form made me feel as if I had just been reunited with a twin brother that had been separated from me long time ago.

Although I had already stopped pressing the mortal's body against the floor he was still lying petrified and staring at me with his orbs widened and his head trembling.

"No no no no no no no!" he started repeating over and over. "No no no, this should not have happened!"

I shifted my gaze to the worshipper's leader and got off my knees.

"Perhaps this would not have happened had you not taken your enemy's side." I responded flatly. "Your cowardice made you choose the wrong kind of beings to worship, human, and now you've become the executioner of your own self. Now be released, mortal, and maybe in your next life you will make no such mistakes."

With these words I mightily drove the sword into the man's heart, his clothing and flesh sizzling from the Reaver's scorching touch.

The religionist shrieked in agony as the wraith blade gnawed through his corporeal shell and enswathed the long-desired spirit with its devouring spectral energy.

Once the worshipper's life essence got absorbed into the weapon his body went limp and eyes unseeing, and then his emptied flesh slowly began to smolder out. By accepting even a small measure of the Dark Gift these mortals claimed to have received from their vampire masters they invited corruption into their blood and with their souls gone there was nothing left of their presence in this world, not even their dead bodies.


	5. Chapter 5: Obligation

**Obligation**

Once all the vampire worshippers were defeated I decided to walk round the hall and explore its obscure area. The human zealots might have been good at lurking and disguising, but they could not have emerged out of nowhere, which meant that this place had to lead to some other premises of the cathedral.

Before long I discovered a doorway and entered it, the dark-covered entrance bringing me into a large chamber stacked with numerous two-tired beds. Apparently it was the very living room the worshippers resided with since the rest of the cathedral was invaded by the vampires. At the same time the edifice was initially crafted _by_ and _for_ the humans, so perhaps there could be other rooms like this one that the religionists could use as a suitable refuge and thus more other worshippers living in them that I had not yet encountered.

I, nonetheless, hoped not.

As I paced further into the depth of the chamber I found out that the bunks were not the only things occupying its space. Beyond the beds there were piles of sacks and containers bulked on the floor, all filled with spare weapons and armor.

I ran an eye over this arsenal, recognizing the already familiar daggers and staves, but also some other weapons like swords, spears, shields and crossbows. It was curious that the zealots that had attacked me previously confined themselves to using only daggers and staves while having such a variety of choices. Perhaps they just also had some war host divisions like the vampire hunters did and the members of each one were trained to handle only a single type of weapon.

Another peculiarity about this arsenal that captured my attention was that amongst all this spectrum of manifold armory no signs of any magic equipment could be found.

That amulet-like artifact that the leader of the worshippers had used on me to prohibit my symbiotic sword from projecting was clearly of some magic origin.

But if these humans were not active sorcery-users then who in the world could have provided them with such a cursed ornament?

And, moreover, who could have created an artifact that had an effect specifically on the Reaver blade – the one-of-a-kind weapon?

If once again it was Kain's hand that authored this doing then there was still much for me to anticipate before my journey here was over.

The walls of the room carried numerous shelves cluttered with corked bottles that contained some cloudy red liquid. Though I was unable to check that empirically there was no doubt that inside these bottles was blood.

So it appeared to be the core of the 'good-neighborly' relations between the Zephonim and the human worshippers that lived here. In order to spare their lives the mortals farmed small amounts of blood and stored it away, rationing its usage – a clever system, indeed, but manageable only for a small population of vampires and within a remote region, which is why it was rarely used by the clans in the times when I was still a vampire.

But what had truly sparked my interest was not this system itself, but the notion of the Zephonim being involved in it. I could hardly imagine the possibility of persuading a horde of feral ghouls to simply feed on bottled blood instead of devouring it from the bodies of their victims. With their corrupted minds the vampires could not just be weaned of their innate predator instincts and habits like some domesticated animals. Even if they were mentally capable of understanding the necessity of stockpiling blood as a result of their self-preservation viscera, there had to be something else that sill prevented them from expanding their appetites to their human servants.

After all, why would these diluted mortals have chosen namely the Zephonim to serve? When I traveled across the Melchiahim clan territory for instance, there was not a single worshipper to get in my way. If there had been at least some of them residing there they would have certainly attempted to stop me from eliminating their masters. Of course, the fact that the Melchiahim vampires required not only the blood of their victims, but their skin as well could explain why the religionists were reluctant to occupy the same territory they did. Yet this did not make the Zephonim less dangerous beings to share a dwelling with, so the motives of the zealots that had inhabited this edifice were still unclear to me.

More and more thoughts kept on interweaving in my head as I continued to consider further questions as to the ambiguities around these vampire worshippers, like how they sustained themselves in this pandemonium without any food and in what way they received the Dark Gifts of the vampires that made them so strong and agile.

Before I completely immersed into the whirlpool of my mind reflections I caught myself thinking that I was wasting my time here. I still had the way to the pinnacle of the cathedral and the captured squadron of the vampire hunters to search for, and this place was obviously unhelpful to me in this.

My hopes for the compliancy of the zealots had failed completely as well, and now even with all the mysteries I had already unveiled and all the hurdles I had cleared I still felt like making no headway.

The condition of having to rely on nobody but myself was bringing me not only self-dependence but lots of hardships as well, and I was beginning to have an unpleasant apprehension that my decision to reject the Elder God's assistance was a bit rushed one. A partner or companion of mine he might not have been, but he was the one to follow me step by step since my unique rebirth and the one to guide me throughout my quest. Even though I was deeply irritated by his constant holding back some insights from me it was still better than knowing nothing at all.

And so I wondered: could I now dispense with my ancient protector's directions and overcome these tasks all by myself or would I have to admit that I had overestimated my powers?

Just when I inwardly asked myself this question a voice suddenly echoed within the vaults of my mind, calling my name, =_Raziel!_=

This was so unexpected that I boggled on alert and started instinctively glancing around and above, looking for the presence of another prowling worshipper to use _the Whisper_ ability on me.

With my exacerbated vigilance I did not even note at first that the voice I was hearing had no menacing intonations and on the contrary was a calm and friendly one.

This voice was feminine and I was more than well acquainted with the woman it belonged to – it was Ariel, and someway somehow she was now communicating with me telepathically.

"Ariel?" I asked in astonishment as soon as my conscience managed to believe in such an occasion. "How can I hear you?"

=_There will be enough time for explanations later, Raziel.= _she replied in her all-time soft and soothing tone._ =I'm here to guide you to Zephon's lair. Listen to my voice and I will lead you there._=

There felt as if Ariel had been reading my thoughts all this time and responded to my unspoken wish of having a companion by somehow establishing this distant connection between our minds. I could only wonder how she managed to do it, but the perception of her spirit being interjoined with mine, even though only on a mental level, was the most pleasurable and conciliating feeling I had experienced in a while. With the whole flurry of riddles and tasks to have afflicted me I had almost forgotten about the devotion and understanding Ariel showed me when I first met her spirit in the Sanctuary of the Clans. And now that I had falsely bethought that there was no one else but the Elder God to assist me in my journey her so sudden emergence was like a direct refutation of this misbelieve.

Without saying a word in return I approvingly nodded as if Ariel was now present here with me and promptly exited the chamber.

Though my wandering here was evidently far from over yet, the realization that I was no longer all on my own gave me the first germs of hope that I would sooner or later be able to finally reach the summit of the cathedral and find my brother Zephon.

* * *

Guided by Ariel's voice resonating inside my head I returned to the hidden room which I had entered earlier by using the secret doorway in the wall. There was another passage-way this room led to and now it appeared to be the exact way I should have chosen to go in the very beginning.

The corridor I entered was much longer and more curving than the one that brought me to the worshippers' retreat, so Ariel's accompaniment proved to be evermore useful here.

And so I ran through this maze of passages with the telepathic echo of the former Balance Guardian drawing me on like a compass. The sense of her presence somewhere in the depths of my subconscious felt incredibly calming and inspirational and I was so afraid of accidentally losing this invisible intangible link between our essences that could not help reflexively tensing my mental concentration each time her voice temporarily became silent.

At some point I wondered whether the Elder God who probably used the same method of communication to contact me could now hear my conversation with her. Ever since my first encounter with her my ancient protector was so fervently trying to convince me that she was not the best kind of a partner to ally myself with that it would be at least interesting to see his reaction to Ariel's replacing him as my conductor in this quest.

After a while the corridor I was straying through took me to another room with lots of metal tubes jutting out from the walls and extending to almost half of the room's space. The word 'room' actually was not the most accurate one, since the place seemed to have been designed to be immured – the entrance was in fact a crumbled breach in the wall with no signs of any purposed doorway to once have been there.

As I walked inside I saw that the pipes and walls were almost entirely covered in webbing, which color changed from silver-grey to brown and mossy green in some places.

Attached to this webbing hung numerous hasps of thread like the one I had seen the trapped human warrior to be entangled in.

I carefully approached the nearest one and tried to study it.

The webbing's tissue was slowly shrinking in and out, pulsing like a cardiac muscle. I touched the hasp with my left hand talons and instantly groped for the shape of some being's figure inside it. The proportions were manifestly not human, but to make it sure I decided to have a look inside and tore off the webbing's tissue in its upper part.

The cut excreted great mass of unpleasant green slime until the head of the enwrapped creature got revealed and I saw that folded in this thread was a pupating Zephonim, its eyes closed in a deep sleep and the early milky flesh on its face only beginning to coalesce.

So it turned out that the Zephonim's ability to weave web had a little bit more to it than just the purpose of capturing prey. The arachnid ghouls appeared to use this clammy substance they emanated from their bodies to spin cocoons around themselves while undergoing the process of evolution.

This system was more or less similar to the one used by the vampires in the times of early Empire when they would enter the so called 'state of change'. The only difference was that the cocoons my former relatives used to encase themselves in were merely an extension of their own skin, which made them share all vampiric strengths and weaknesses, including vulnerability to the touch of water, fire and so on. This made the members of my former race nearly defenseless during the periods when they were asleep on the way toward their advanced mutation.

Both the Melchiahim and the Zephonim, however, were notably trying to double protect their evolving species by putting them underground or inside webbing cocoons. I had to admit that even regardless of the degrading effect the corruption had on the vampires' minds their bestial viability was to be envied.

Just as I came to this conclusion my ears instinctively twitched in response to the painfully familiar sound of impending rattle.

I turned around and got my eyes set on two Zephonim dropping in front of me from the ceiling with a loud crackle of their dystrophic limbs. Both looked to be adults, having those distinctive dark skin frills on their backs and sharp spikes growing out of their front limbs. Apparently they were the guardians of this nest and had detected my presence here even before I had detected theirs.

I raised the Soul Reaver outstretched to keep the beasts at a distance, while they simultaneously sprang asunder as if trying to distract my focus.

Having figured out their tactic I took the defensive and started brandishing with the blade now at one Zephonim and now at the other one, until the one to the left of me lastly took a pounce.

I nimbly danced out of the ghoul's way, spinning myself and slicing off its bony forelimb with a roundhouse swing, which left the arachnid squeal in anguish.

The second vampire rushed at me straight after, almost catching me off-guard, and rammed me into the web-covered wall behind. At first I expected a hard impact, but when my body simply tore all the way through the ramshackle thread I realized there was no wall there but merely a whole screen of cobweb dividing this room in two separate fields.

I thumbed head over heels, rolling across the stone floor until my body struck against something heavy and solid standing in the middle of the place.

The collision instantly took away the wraith blade's manifestation, getting me temporarily dazed.

I had to blink several times before I was able to clear my vision, but even such brief moment of inattentiveness was enough for the Zephonim to gain the momentum.

The monster bolted at me like an arrow, as I barely managed to regroup and catch both its elongated arms in mid-air before the sharp talons tucked into my flesh.

The beast attempted to break away from my grip, but I managed to overpower it and retain the hold, then got to my feet and blindly slammed it into what turned out to be another webbing hasp standing behind me.

I was about to get confused how a bundle of spider's web could have felt so rigid to crash into, but once the vampire's bulk bumped against it I understood that the webbing was only a frame for what was inside it: the impact produced the ringing sound that immediately filled the entire space with deafening clanging noise, giving me to understand that enshrouded in this hasp was a church-bell.

Although I had overcome my former vampiric vulnerability to the sound, the ringing was still so loud that I could not help but cover my ears with my palms.

But this method didn't work for the Zephonim that I tossed into the web-cloaked bell, which began to rive in agony and nearly lacerate its own head, unable to withstand the lethal noise penetrating deep into its eardrums.

As the resonance of the ringing subsided the feral ghoul slumped stunned, its skeleton-like husk doubled up and its limbs and head trembling palsy.

I cautiously approached its bent body and sighted the snark to be bleeding from its nose, ear-holes and even from its eyes. This was only a small scale of an illustration how devastating the power of sound could be to the vampires and what chaos the humans could have created by using the cathedral's pipes had they ever had the opportunity.

Without giving the beast a second to recover I rapidly dissected its throat with my talons and gobbled the released vampire soul, restoring the Reaver's projection.

Once the blade's energy returned to me I walked back into the previous part of the room where the combat had ensued. The Zephonim whose limb I had chopped off minutes away was lying stunned on the ground just like its predecessor, but that paled in comparison with how the bell's ringing had affected the cocoons nested there: they were all burst open now with tons of thick slime pouring out of them and the bloodied underdeveloped bodies of prematurely hatched arachnids poking out as if trying to run away from the deadly noise by abandoning their pupal shells.

Taking into account how even fully grown vampires were unable to endure the sound of such high-frequency it was not that surprising that these scarcely formed spawns were absolutely helpless in the face of this squall of tuning even despite the membrane of web that was supposed to protect their bodies during the evolution period.

Yet this explanation did not make the entire spectacle look less sickening and even I who by now was more than used to watching different disgusting abominations was nauseated by the sight of this.

Slowly the life essences began to leave the germinal corpses of the cocooned Zephonim and gather within the chamber. They all seemed to be more faded and lurid than the ordinary vampire spirits, which was probably the result of these souls having unfettered from they corporeal shells prematurely, before their hosts had even completely come into the world. The richness of a soul depended on its maturity, and these ones were so unripe they could hardly carry some fair amount of energy with them.

Still I decided not to leave them for the scavengers of the Underworld and took down my shoulder-cape, drawing them all in at one gulp.

With the disappearance of the essences in my maw the emptied embryo-like cadavers started glowing away, liberating the place from their revolting presence.

In a few seconds there was already no snip of the Zephonim's existence left in the chamber, except for the stunned arm-missing ghoul on the floor that was gradually beginning to regain its consciousness. Before it finally did I briskly got at it and finished it off with one precise sword swipe, crushing its carcass to pieces and feeding the unbound soul to the Reaver blade.

With all the foes down I was at last ready to carry on. The problem was that this chamber I was in now didn't seem to lead anywhere, which for a moment rendered me skeptical whether Ariel had provided me with the right direction.

But just as earlier her voice had emerged in the reservoirs of my mind before any idea of doubt managed to take shape there, =_You must climb up those pipes, Raziel.= _she whispered._ =They will bring you to the upper tier of this building. Hurry, every second counts!_=

I glanced again at the plexus of hydraulic pipes crinkling above me high upwards, conceiving that perchance I was a little too previous to assume that this place was a dead end.

Listening to Ariel's advice I wasted no time and quickly took a high bounce on the lowest tube of all. The tubes were not too big, but still broad enough to land on them with feet and keep the balance.

So I continued to leap from one pipe to another, making my way to the top, my moves smooth and accurate like that of a cat. I knew I could as well clutch at the pipes with my hands, but my right one was bound to the wraith blade, which I was reluctant to get rid of now, for I had a strong foreboding that I would be needing it again very soon.

* * *

Before long I reached the top of this spire of tubes and discovered a wide tunnel in the distant wall formed by two gigantic pipes jutting out from somewhere above and spreading all the way through it.

The size and design of the pipes expressly indicated that they had nothing to do with sewerage but were two of the many sounding organs of the cathedral.

There appeared that even despite the seeming oddness of the route Ariel had directed me through her guidelines were correct after all. My senses were identified as well – I could feel the fluids of Zephon's presence somewhere close very legibly, though I was not sure that the tier I was about to enter was the very one he occupied.

Still this was an indubitable step forward, and I could not wait to develop this progress of mine.

The tunnel I jumped into turned out to be pretty long, but fortunately one-way, which did not puzzle me with many choices of ways to go.

Just like in the chamber below the walls in this tunnel were caked with webbing nearly impermeably, but no cocooned vampire larvae were placed on them. This finding conveyed me the suggestion that it was very weird for the Zephonim to have established their nest in such proximity to that bell, for even despite the demented intellect they had to understand that it was a real source of danger for their pupating offspring. This clan had already proven the consistency of their strategic thinking on several occasions, and now it was even unusual to call them on being so negligent.

Perhaps they simply did not expect any intruder to be capable of perching on a tier that high and then tolling the bell that was so carefully hidden from view.

Moreover, it was hardly the only nest the Zephonim had here, so a loss of one so poorly located might not have been considered to be that crucial.

Soon the tunnel lost its former unidirectional attractiveness, dividing into two passages. Once again Ariel's guidance was not long in coming, =_You should go to the left._= she muttered into my brain.

The burden of tough choice was again taken down from my shoulders and I was already about to start running the denoted way when my sharpened hearing suddenly picked up on some distant sounds of battle coming from the right passage-way.

I slowed my pace for a moment and harkened: the clash of metal and animalistic cries of rage could be heard from a distance of about eighty yards away.

To make a broader picture of the ongoing I strained my nose and immediately scented subtle aroma trails left in the air: most of them were audibly vampiric, but several appeared to belong to… humans.

As I found that out my thoughts quickly dipped into the recent memories of my travel through this edifice.

Could those humans whose smell I had detected be the brothers of the warrior that I failed to save earlier before?

The odds were unlikely to be in favor of such possibility – no way could a small group of mortals survive inside a building teemed with bloodthirsty monstrous ghouls and their fanatical armed-to-teeth human servants.

Yet, who else could be engaging in a combat with vampires?

Apparently the only way to tell for sure was to go there and check.

As I walked into the right passage instead of the left one Ariel instantly hailed me with her telepathic voice, _=What are you doing?_= she asked me with a note of concern and disappointment. _=There is no time for this now!=_

"I'm sorry, Ariel, but I cannot do other than that." I replied and insistently hastened my steps.

Maybe disaccording with Ariel's direction was not the best idea in this situation, but I was also aware that I would feel nefarious to know that I had willfully gone back on my word of honor. Even if these humans fighting there were not the ones I was looking for I still had to be certain about that.

In a few seconds I approached the battle area close enough to examine its scene and cautiously peered out of one of the outstretching pipes.

What I saw was a fierce skirmish involving three human warriors desperately fighting for their lives against five Zephonim - three adults and two fledglings - squashing them into the corner.

Two warriors were in full black plate mail like the one I had seen on a sentinel hunter in the camp near the cathedral and on the hunters in the Necropolis, both armed with crossbows and short daggers they were brandishing with at their adversaries in an attempt to keep them at a bay.

The third warrior standing amidst of them wore heavy scarlet armor with black pauldrons and gauntlets and grey iron greaves, poleyns and sabatons and was furiously swinging right and left with a long two-handed sword all smudged with blood of his adversaries. Unlike his partners he had no helmet covering his head, and from this distance the features of his face were quite discernable: he had shaggy-looking raven black hair and a trimmed black circle-beard. His vestment was clearly of the same design with the warrior I had met earlier, which raised the chances that my investigation here was not in vain.

As I noticed several corpses of defeated arachnids lying on the ground here and there I conceived that these hunters were not exactly such an easy nut to crack. One had to give credit to them for being able to stand up to rivals as vicious and resourceful as the Zephonim even when being outnumbered. However, judging by the undergoing of the battle I deduced that the ghouls were not really intending to kill these humans – they were visibly 'playing' with the warriors as if trying to exhaust them. Most probably their aim was to injure these humans, then capture them as preys to feed on their blood later – so much like what was supposed to be done to that warrior that was assassinated by the vampire worshippers.

Anyway, the hunters were obviously prostrated by this oppressing onslaught and it was high time for me to interfere in this mayhem.

Using the pipe I was hiding behind as a spring board I precipitately leapt forward at one of the adult ghouls and disrupted its carcass to sheds with one mighty sword's blow before any of the Zephonim was even able to react to my sudden attack.

Once the Reaver devoured the precious soul in a loud scream of satisfied jubilation all the glances in the chamber were immediately cast at me and me only. For a moment both the vampires and the humans stood motionlessly, staring at me in frozen postures of shock. Since the warrior in scarlet armor didn't wear a helmet the emotions on his face were the only and most illustrative: his widened eyes were regarding me with an expression of utter horror and disbelief as if he was now feeling the earth under his feet to be about to swallow him up.

Then after a moment of several heartbeats he lastly managed to force himself into speaking the first words of his overwhelming dismay, "What in the Nine Hells is this?!"

His question seemed to have brought back the bearings to all those present in the chamber, including the Zephonim, and in the next second two pairs of cloven paws were already shot forth at me.

I made a back somersault to evade the blows, landing about ten feet away from where my foes stood.

One of the fledglings lunged at me therewith, but I countered the lurch, hacking off its head and half of its front limb in mid-air with one blade swipe, instantly getting the juvenile vampire's spirit absorbed into the Reaver.

"This creature is dismantling the vampires!" shouted one of the arbalesters. "It is on our side!"

"Don't jump to conclusions, Zolyn!" the one with the sword retorted. "It might turn on us as soon as it is done with them!"

The remaining Zephonim already stopped paying attention to the mortals and set all their sights on me, two of them clinging to the left wall and attempting to catch me in their web.

I ducked under two sticky strings they shot at me then tried to quickly capitalize while they were still on the wall, but on the spur of the moment both beasts adroitly leapt out of my blade's way.

I bluntly span myself and gazed upon the third vampire darting at me with its jaws open for a bite.

Having no second to sidestep or deliver a counterattack I only managed to shelter myself with the Reaver's ethereal corpus.

The feral ghoul barged into the firing blade then rebounded back with screech, getting its ugly snout burned.

Seeing that the clash made the monster waver I rapidly flourished my right arm, aiming for the finishing blow, when all of a sudden another Zephonim feinted at me from the right and hit me to the shoulder.

I staggered back from impact, losing the wraith blade's energy, as all three arachnids immediately availed themselves from my mistake and simultaneously advanced on me from all sides with renewed vigor.

The one with the burned muzzle threatingly swung at me with its forelimb as if looking to deliver a retaliatory punch when all out of nowhere a metal bolt struck it right into the neck.

The other two vampires roused themselves in surprise as their pack-mate started shrieking in pain and spouting a whole fountain of blood from the wound.

The ghoul to the left of me changed face to observe the source of aggression and at once got another bolt right between the eyes.

I turned my head and sighted the two human arbalesters couched in the corner of the chamber, their crossbows held in position to fire. The next thing to come into my view was the warrior in scarlet armor violently jumping at the head-wounded gollywog with a loud barbaric war-cry and cleaving its tiny head with his sword in two almost perfectly equal halves.

Having comprehended that the mortals had after all decided to join me in this confrontation I took advantage of the occurred mess and attacked the only unhurt Zephonim standing to the right of me.

The fiend dodged my lunge and momentarily changed over to offensive, throwing at me its prolonged front limbs like two scythe blades.

I parried several sweeps then caught hold of the vampire's left arm with my right hand talons and shot forth my left ones, aiming at the ghoul's scraggy ribcage.

The arachnidan ghast responded with the very same move, catching my hand with its free one and leading to both of us holding each other by the arms.

We started struggling, each of us trying to outdo the other one in the terms of physical strength.

It was until the scarlet-armored warrior rabidly rushed in our direction, its sword swung behind its back for a vertical attack. Most likely he was intending to help me there, but the effect happened to be opposite when my enemy turned this assault to its own account, harshly twitching me off my place and hurling me right into the racing man.

My carcass knocked the warrior down and thudded to the ground as I heard the man's sword dropping behind me on the floor with a loud clang.

As I wheeled on I beheld the Zephonim standing over the sprawled disarmed human with its mouth slobbering and talons unclenched for a deadly stroke.

The throw dashed me for a pretty long distance and I realized that even if I surged forward now using all my velocity I still would not make it in time to shield the mortal from the fatal blow.

Being sure that I was once more about to witness the death of another vampire hunter that I was unable to save I helplessly gaped at what was going to happen when suddenly two bolts pierced into the chest of the arachnid, forcing it to shrink back from the defenseless warrior.

I again reflexively turned back my head only to view the same two crossbowmen standing in the corner of the chamber in attacking stance.

Then I quickly recollected my strengths and desperately leapt at the wounded ghoul, drawing my claws into its throat and tearing out the windpipe in a splash of blood.

The devolved vampire went crashing down, agonizingly gurgling with gore, while the scarlet-armored mortal hectically picked up his sword and much to my astonishment charged at me with a countenance of pure rampage on his face.

I was ready to think that now that the Zephonim were defeated these humans were about to treacherously fall upon me much in the nature of their cowardly kind and already made a move to counter the thrust.

But at the supreme moment I caught a glimpse of the man's eyes looking not _at_ me, but _past_ me.

I swiftly stepped aside and found the warrior jabbing his blade straight through the bony abdomen of another vampire that appeared out of nowhere right in the rear of where I was standing just a second away.

As the spider-like beast got impaled on the sword I noticed a bolt sticking out of its neck and concluded that it was the very one whose face I had burned with the Reaver's flame earlier. Evidently one crossbow-shot turned out to be insufficient to mortify it and while everyone was busy battling its fellows it managed to get lost to view and then tried to ambush me from behind. But thanks to the vampire hunter I managed to retain some reserves of soul energy which that cheap shot could have taken away from me.

The warrior roughly scraped the Zephonim's bulk off his claymore with a foot-kick then raised the blade again as if planning to completely disembowel the vampire's dead body.

"Die, sordid wretch!" he screamed savagely, looking to bring down his weapon on the dying skeleton-like frame one more time until I halted him with a gesture of my hand.

"No, let me do this!" I said and the human stopped short and again glanced at me in awe, probably because it was the first time he got to hear me speaking.

I lowered my face-wrap, allowing the gaping maw to magnetize the breaking-free essence from the vampire's body and then drain it on together with several more souls flying through the chamber that had not yet escaped into the spectral realm. It was enough to replenish the energy I had expended in this combat and bring back the wraith blade's projection to me.

And just as before my act of soul devouring got involuntarily revealed to the warriors standing around me that now began to observe my unique identity as it was for them from an entirely new angle…


	6. Chapter 6: New Alliance

**New Alliance**

For a minute or two all three hunters were speechless, the one in scarlet armor shockingly looking now at me and now at the blue firing form of the Reaver manifesting from my right arm and brightly radiating in the darkness of the chamber. The two in black armor had their ganders securely hidden by the helmets, but their postures still appreciably betrayed their disarray as well.

Eventually one of them would break this silence at last, "What has it done to that vampire?" he asked with flutter in his voice.

"It has just stolen its soul!" the second one answered, also sounding horror-stricken. "This creature is a God!"

I had already heard the same remarks about me from the hunters in the Necropolis, and they neither flattered me back there, nor here now. What love of idolatry these pathetic mortals had, I thought. Perhaps it was not that strange after all that some of them started worshipping my degraded brethren and their progenies.

The scarlet-armored warrior gave those two a reproaching look and they became silent again. Then he sheathed his blooded sword and went down onto one knee, bowing before me in submission. After a short moment of hesitation the arbalesters also followed his example.

"I am Bolgor, and these are my brothers Zolyn and Ansek." he addressed himself to me. "We are the warriors of the Human Citadel – a proud resistance fighting vampire scum across this deceasing land."

After this phrase he lifted his head a bit to maintain the eye-contact and continued speaking.

"I don't know who… or what you are, creature," he muttered the word 'creature' with little diffidence as if being unsure how I would react to it. "But we owe you our lives."

"My name is Raziel." I introduced myself shortly.

Bolgor's glance seemed to have become more eased after hearing this, as if the fact that I told him my name was some sort of first step to establishing good chemistry between us.

"Tell me… Raziel," he referred to me by name after a little vacillation. "Are you a God?"

"Not even remotely." I responded dryly.

"You have to be a God," he proceeded, ignoring my negative reply. "For we have seen a lot in our time, but never before had we ever witnessed anything what you have displayed. You must be the Messiah whose arrival we've been awaiting for so long - the avenging angel that will assist us in our war against the vampire plague."

I sighed, knowing too damn well where this all was going.

"Please, enough of these eulogies…" I interrupted him disdainfully, feeling the return of appropriate neglect toward the human kin. "I am not some kind of a deity and hopefully will never be one! And the only reason I saved you is because that is what one of your brothers asked me to do, and I gave him my word that I would."

Bolgor arched an eyebrow and sharply rose from his knee.

"One of our brothers?" he asked with his voice beginning to grow harsh. "Who are you talking about?"

Only now I caught myself thinking that I did not even know the name of the man whose wish I was carrying out now. But taking into account the circumstances under which we met each other it was no wonder that we failed to exchange such civilities.

"I'm afraid I don't know his name, but I know that he was the single one of your squadron that managed to escape when you were assaulted by the vampires." I said.

"Moldgar?" the hunter asked me, though the name conveyed nothing to me. "He asked you to save us?"

"If we're talking of the one and same 'Moldgar', then, apparently, yes, he did." I replied with little annoyance.

Bolgor thoughtfully gazed aside and locked his hands behind his head in a gesture of puzzlement. The two crossbowmen in the corner also exchanged glances with one another.

"My goodness!" he exclaimed. "All this time we've been cursing him for betraying us and fleeing in full swing of the battle, but he was not a traitor – he only wanted to help!"

"According to what he had told me he was trying to activate the cathedral's organs on his own to scour this edifice of the vampires' invasion so that the future squadrons would be able to recapture it." I elucidated. "And this actually has to do with my presence here as well…"

But Bolgor was no longer following my point.

"Where is Moldgar now?" he asked me with such agitation that his question sounded more like a demand. The man's emotions had clearly got the better of his recent feeling of admiration for my personality.

"He's dead." I replied coldly after a short pause.

The look of anxiety on Bolgor's face slowly changed to an incredulous one.

"No… He cannot be…" the hunter attempted to deny my words, but I didn't let him get deeper into any false expectations.

"He was murdered by the ones you call 'the vampire worshippers'." I resumed.

The warrior eyeballed me for several more seconds, then broke into a furious scowl and angrily knuckled his gauntleted hands, his eyes flaring up.

"Despicable treacherous bastards!" he spat once he regained control of his speech. "My blade will plunge their cowardly carcasses into an entire bloodbath for taking Moldgar's life!"

"Forget about them." I told him in an imperative manner. "Those that killed your brother are already burning in the depths of oblivion as we speak. What you _should_ be concerned with now is escaping from this place alive together with the rest of your squadron's survivors."

This phrase seemed to have woken up the warrior out of his trance of rage, and he focused his sight on me again.

"No way are we leaving this place for nothing!" he retorted bristly. "We came here to reclaim the cathedral from the monsters and we are going to fight till our final breath!"

I ruefully shook my head in response, demonstrating my disappointment.

"Haven't you realized yet that you don't stand a single chance against these beasts?" I asked with toneless repentance. "It's a miracle that you're even alive so far. Evacuate your people and leave this contaminated edifice for good. I will deal with the rest by myself."

Bolgor frowned slightly at this, but quickly remastered himself and continued the conversation.

"What makes you think you can confront the vampires all on your own?" he asked me in a factious tone, forgetting all his former trepidation before my persona. "You might be an inconceivably powerful being, but we have seen you in battle, and you are _not_ invincible. Some time or other you _will_ need help, so why not let us join you?"

The man's naïve arguments deeply amused me and I would have smiled at them if I could.

"Invincible I may not be, but I _am_ indestructible." I asserted. "And you, as far as I can judge, are _not_. So don't bother me with your laughable alliance offers! I fight _for_ no one and _under_ no one!"

I made a short after this phrase, feeling that perhaps I was getting too insolent here, and softened my voice a bit, "Besides, I promised Moldgar that I will provide for your security, and my promise I shall keep. So if you're so desperate to help - assemble the remainders of your squadron and vacate the cathedral as quickly as possible. I've seen a camp of other vampire hunters pitched not far from here, I'm sure they will welcome you."

Bolgor sighed sadly, comprehending that his hopes for forming an alliance with me were not to come true. But just as I already turned my back to him as if to walk away from here he once again attempted to halt me in my tracks.

"Anyway, we're not leaving this place until we set all our brothers free!" he declared steadily.

I shortened the stride and slowly whirled round, confusingly narrowing my eyes on the hunter.

"All your brothers?" I asked suspiciously. "Are you meaning to say there are still some of them left alive here?"

"We don't know for sure." he replied with a note of contentment as if my enthusiasm to his previous tirade was the very reaction he was counting on. "All the ghouls that had been attacking us up until now didn't kill anyone in an instant – they only captured whoever they could seize and then took them somewhere. But if we hurry now, there might be a chance that we'll find them before it's too late."

I gathered my eyebrows, pondering over what Bolgor had told me. This idea had not even crossed my mind before, but if there really were some other human hunters held captive here I could not just leave them die in this perdition of a place. Of course, taking precious time on searches for a couple of unknown mortals that were most likely dead by now was a calculated risk, for even Bolgor didn't seem to truly believe in the probability of their survival. Yet, 'selectively' fulfilling the promise I had made was not the best way to keep a word of honor either. After all, these humans shared with me a common enemy, so maybe lending a trace more assistance to them would cause no great harm to my own interests.

"Do you know where they could have taken them?" I put a question to the warrior, finally getting to the matter.

There was a notable glimmer of faint joy creasing over Bolgor's gaze before he answered me.

"Not precisely." he replied. "We have already inspected the lower tiers and failed to find any signs of our brothers trapped there. The ghouls must be taking their preys right to the topmost level of the cathedral, and we are planning to encroach on it."

I stared hard at the hunter, now comprehending that our purposes were not really so much diverse. Presumably I would even be able to help these humans and still win my own ultimate objective.

"Then consider yourself lucky, human," I referred to Bolgor after a moment of contemplation, again retrieving some of my former supercilious attitude. "For our goals here appear to coincide. And at this rate I _will_ let you join me."

Then I raised my left-hand talon for emphasis.

"But make no mistake about it – this is only a temporary alliance. If only you interfere with my own business or anyhow else get in my way, I won't hesitate a second to rip out your hearts."

Bolgor's eyes widened fearfully at this line, but he quickly recollected himself.

"It will be our honor to accompany you." he said with fortitude and kneeled before me again.

Zolyn and Ansek that at some point had as well returned to their feet and were now standing silently in the corner and watching our dialogue from a distance once again obediently repeated the gesture of their partner.

"Then let us don't waste our time on useless ceremonies." I commanded and swung round to start making our way out of this passage.

* * *

Accompanied by the vampire hunters stringing along with me I soon returned to the tunnel divarication and headed toward the left passage which Ariel initially led me to. Ever since I had defied her direction and gone to the rescue of the human warriors instead she had not uttered a word to me, which was indeed a worrying signal. The sense of mental connection between our spirits was lost now and I was unable to contact her mind no matter how hard I tried. I only hoped this was not some sort of 'silent treatment' of me on her part, but merely an accident and this was not an attempt to give me a piece of her mind for neglecting her guidance. After all, the spirit of the former Balance Guardian had to have enough wisdom to understand that I had pretty good reasons to do what I did.

While Zolyn and Ansek were humbly marching several feet behind, Bolgor was insistently trying to keep pace with me and from time to time maintain the conversation by asking different things. He seemed to be gradually getting used to my gruesome appearance and now his childish human curiosity just couldn't make him stop putting to me one question after another.

"You still haven't told what manner of being you actually are." he referred to me yet again. "You are like no other creature we have ever seen: your features look demonic, but your flesh is so badly burned and scarred…"

I snapped Bolgor off this phrase with a cold displeased stare.

"I was a vampire once." I told him, not knowing myself for what reasons I was even developing this theme any further.

The hunter had to stop walking for an instant to digest this information.

"Vampire? But how?" he asked with amazement.

I said nothing in reply and simply continued pacing forward. After several seconds Bolgor resurfaced out of his contemplations and hastened to catch up with me again.

"But if you were a vampire in the past, why are you exterminating them now?" he wondered.

"Let's say that I have no love for them anymore." I returned disparagingly.

After that answer of mine Bolgor had gone silent for quite a while, and I could guess why: the revelation that the creature he thought to be a God and Messiah in fact used to belong to the very kind he despised the most must have truly shattered all his illusions. Even I who by now should have already got accustomed to this new existence of mine was still abashed at the unthinkable twist of fate that fell to my share.

Though the long-awaited interruption of the human's squall of questions certainly felt refreshing, at some point I sensed my own curiosity getting the better of me and broke this settled silence with a question of my own.

"Now _you_ tell me something for a change," I spoke to Bolgor. "How come you appear on a tier that high if the only elevator that could have lifted you here is destroyed?"

The scarlet-armored hunter curtly turned his gaze to me and chuckled slightly.

"That's because there are plenty of secret passages and stairways constructed here." he replied proudly. "Our architects had foreseen the probability of invasion and designed these hidden tunnels on every tier so that the residents could always evacuate in case of occupation. We used one of those to hide from the ghouls and then get here without being followed."

The man's explanation instantly reminded me of that cryptic doorway I had discovered on the lower tier when I was chasing Moldgar's murderers. It now appeared rather odd to me that Moldgar came to know nothing of all these hidden passages and tried to escape by using the elevator, which he himself had to fracture then to get rid of his pursuers. Perhaps this was a befuddled act of desperation on his part, but still his logic was beyond my understanding.

Anyway, I decided not to add oil to the flames and did not tell Bolgor about this.

"But how did you manage to remain uncaught by the vampires?" I continued to inquire him. "I thought that Moldgar was the only warrior of your squadron who had succeeded in running away."

"He was…" answered Bolgor dolefully. "We _too_ got captured, but unlike the rest we managed to break free before the beasts had taken us to their nest or whenever they were trying to carry us to."

I blinked once at the hunter in surprise, being reluctant to believe in what he had narrated. Even I with all my increased strength and stamina would hardly be able to extricate myself from this thread the Zephonim enwrapped their victims into if I ever got entangled in it.

"Forgive me my scepsis, but I can hardly believe in the possibility of this." I told him doubtingly.

Bolgor flashed another pleased smile then demonstratively shortened his left arm.

"Then perhaps you'll believe in this." and with these words he clicked something on the cuff of his gauntlet, making it unfold into three long curved blades.

I amusedly looked at the mortal's peculiar weapon, my reflection glassing itself in its revealed blades. Once more I met confirmation that magic no longer held sway among the human civilization and now only science and technology dominated their development. The mankind's crafts had never stood too far behind the ones of the vampires, and now with the regression of my former race it would not be that marvelous if the human weapon trade had already surpassed the one the vampires knew in the days of the Early Empire.

"Impressive." I stated sincerely.

"Thank you." said Bolgor and again pressed something on his gauntlet to make the blades fold back. "As you see, I used _this_ to untie myself from the webbing."

"You should have provided all of your warriors with such… devices." I remarked.

"We'd love to…" the hunter returned. "But due to constant vampires' attacks and isolation of our stronghold from the greater part of Nosgoth's richest lands we're unable to produce as much armament as we need. Because of that only squadron leaders are currently entitled to have such weapons."

So it followed from this that this man was the commander of the hunters' squadron. Now it was clear for what reasons the other two warriors were so abidingly repeating every move and gesture of his.

"And what is this wondrous weapon of yours?" he asked me then, again staring at the cone-shaped beam of blue energy projecting from my right arm. "I've never seen anything of such devastating power ever before in my life!"

"It is called the Soul Reaver." I answered.

"The Soul Reaver?" he reacted with unexpected astonishment. "Kain's legendary blade?"

I confusedly turned my gaze to him, "How do you know of it?"

"How can I not?" he returned with both bitterness and anger. "Tales are told how he had brought down the entire Sarafan order that used to protect our people from the vampire scourge with this unholy instrument of doom…" Then he glimpsed at the Reaver again and added, "Although I used to imagine it looking a bit different."

"That's because it's not the sword itself, but the energy essence that used to be imprisoned in the weapon's corporeal form – the wraith blade." I explained.

Bolgor had already opened his mouth as if looking say something more, but not a word left his lips as his attention got instantly drawn away by a pile of crumbled stones starting to show in our way. As we walked a couple of feet closer it became visible that the pile blocked the entire pass, the large crumbled wreckages reaching the very ceiling.

"What the…?" asked Bolgor with such a befuddled expression on his face that it looked almost comical.

"Looks like a dead end to me." I commented somewhat sarcastically.

But the hunter was obviously in no mood for jokes as he passionately ran up to the crumble and started making frustrated attempts to lift some of the broken stones. The arbalesters hastened to help their leader while I remained standing on my place, perfectly realizing the abortiveness of their efforts.

Before long the humans seemed to have perceived this as well and came back to themselves from this rush of desperation. Bolgor was the first to stop hectically grabbing the fragments when he stood up erect and slowly turned around to approach me again, his gauntlets all gray from the dust and his dismal glance looking equally gray.

"That's it… We're at an impasse…" he said with a mixture of shock and despair in his voice. "With the elevator destroyed it was the only way to reach the apex of the cathedral, and now it's gone… All is gone…"

In a matter of minutes Bolgor had received the semblance of a man who had just put on ten years, and his brothers Zolyn and Ansek behind him appeared to be experiencing the world's greatest grief as well. But unlike them I was taking my time to lose hope.

"Perhaps not." I declared calmly and all three warriors simultaneously cast their sights at me.

"There might be one more way to reach the summit," I proceeded. "But to make it work I will need your assistance."

A blink of liveliness had once again run over Bolgor's face, and he immediately went all ears.

"How can we be of service, Raziel?" he asked excitedly.

"You have to tell me the location of the mechanism that activates the cathedral's organs." I alleged.

The hunter's eyes had gone shifty after my request, and he stumbingly turned his head to his brothers who also appeared to be greatly taken aback.

"I know that this is a holy mystery of your people, and you are bound by oath to keep it," I continued to persuade them. "But this is a choice between your principles and the well-being of your brethren."

Bolgor took a deep breath through his nostrils and propped his chin with his fist in a gesture of perplexity. The crossbowmen in the rear started warily whispering among themselves, unaware that my inherited vampiric hearing allowed me to make out every word of theirs, no matter how gently spoken.

"We cannot reveal the secret to him!" one of them murmured. "You heard him say that he was a vampire once! He is not to be trusted!"

"But how do we save the others then?" the other one asked obtusely. "He's the only being we know that can match strength against the ghouls! Without his help we are doomed!"

Bolgor was still deep in his thoughts, his expression distant and reflective. For some time I tolerated his silence, but then I broke the hush by taking an irritated tone of voice.

"The longer you linger, the lesser are our chances to make it in time to save your fellows." I said coaxingly. "You have to make the decision, and you have to make it right now!"

The scarlet-armored human took another squint at me and crossed his arms upon his chest.

"Even if we tell you where the mechanism is, I still don't get how it will help us to ascend on the top." he expressed his doubt.

"First you _tell_ me it at last, and then I'll let you into the plan." I told him, and this time it was not a request on my part, but a demand.

A tiny scowl parted Bolgor's lips and he cast another addled glance at his brothers and then at me again.

"Like I said before, we owe you our lives, Raziel." he spoke to me again. "You're right, we _are_ bound by our pledge of secrecy, but far more importantly – we're bound by our honor. And therefore we _will_ tell you the location of the mechanism. But I warn you though: if only you try to use this knowledge against my people, we will have no other choice but to forget our gratitude to you and start treating you as our enemy."

"I'll keep that in mind." I replied imperturbably.

Bolgor cleared his throat and continued his speech, "The mechanism that activates the pipes is located on the third tier in a hidden chamber, which is protected by a set of walls. Our architects were anticipating that the ghouls could assail the cathedral before the organs were even set in motion, so they decided to immure their mechanism behind a completely inexpugnable enclosure – the one they constructed of one very special material…"

As Bolgor mentioned this 'very special material' I was suddenly struck by an enveloping sense that I was already well aware of what he was disclosing to me now.

"Our builders used to extract this material from the mountains of the eastern part of Nosgoth." the warrior proceeded. "It looks like an ordinary stone, but after proper working it becomes as translucent as glass. But its greatest virtue is that despite its transparent glass-like outward this stone can be damaged with neither physical force, nor magic…"

Once he described these features of the material I had lastly felt a spark of enlightenment to dawn upon my mind. This location Bolgor was speaking of was the very one I had discovered right after ascending on the third tier. I was wondering then what the crafters of the cathedral were trying to preserve behind those inaccessible walls, and the answer turned out to be right at the surface. Of course, where else could the humans have entombed a thing of such tremendous importance? It was almost a shame that I had not remembered that earlier. All this time my primary target was right under my nose, but I was so busy fulfilling other tasks that could not see what was nearly conspicuously presented before me.

"There's only one natural power in the world that is capable of crushing it," the hunter went on narrating. "And that is the power of sound."

Bolgor made a short pause after this phrase as though making sure I was intrigued enough then resumed the thread, "If the walls around the chamber are affected by the sound of the right loudness and frequency they will be easily shattered to pieces and the way to the mechanism will become opened. So in order to implement such system we have placed two large church-bells in separate parts of the edifice so that together they could fill the building with resonance loud enough to break them."

Upon that Bolgor paused again, this time as if recollecting whether there was something else that was worth mentioning, then added the following, "There is one more significant thing to this: both bells have to be tolled simultaneously to create sufficient vibration; otherwise the whole scheme would be unavailing."

Then he was finally through, his story told and the holy mystery revealed. After the completion of his telling Bolgor continued watching me for some moment, probably awaiting my thoughts on the matter, while I still kept staring away in contemplation, recalling the bell I had hit upon previously and now conceiving that I should have realized even at that time that there was more to its meaning than just a decorative assignment. When I didn't immediately respond to Bolgor's story his impatience quickly prevailed over him and he obstinately interrupted my moment of cogitation.

"We have revealed to you the location of the mechanism." he lifted up his voice. "Now speak and tell us what your plan is."

His phrase took me out of my thoughts back to reality and I looked him in the eyes again.

"What I'll tell you is that we have to get to those bells as quickly as possible and ring them." I said, but from the look on Bolgor's face I instantly deduced that this was not the answer he expected to hear from me.

"Wait!" he talked back to me with distrust. "You still did not explain how the activation of the organs would help us to get to the pinnacle of the cathedral!"

"Unfortunately it's not going to help any of _you _to get there." I replied, trying to suppress the profound irritation at the warrior's untimely questions. "But it might be of use to _me_. I know that the aim of the mechanism is to channel the airflow through the organs' lines so that they can spread their deadly melody across Nosgoth. I can use this airflow to elevate to the upper tier with the help of my wings."

Bolgor spuriously looked at the tattered ruins of membrane growing out of my back, perhaps for the first time fathoming that those were actually wings.

"How in the world are you going to elevate on… these?!" he asked, sounding almost frightened.

"Trust me, I have already tried that before." I answered calmly.

The human contracted his forehead and drew another deep breath.

"I shall be honest with you, Raziel," he took the word again. "I can hardly imagine the feasibility of your plan. But since we're unable to suggest anything better, I think we'll just have to rely on your variant, for it offers the only hope for our brothers' survival."

"Does it mean that I can count on your help?" I asked despite already knowing the answer.

"Yes." the leader of the hunter squadron replied curtly and thumped himself with his left fist across the chest, acknowledging his reverence to me. "Just tell us what we should do now and we shall."

Though the humans' complaisance was already beginning to wear thin, I did have to admit that it felt gratifying to have their support and allegiance. Regardless of the fact that I never intended to embroil any mortals in my quest, now its outcome depended on their participation just as much as it did on mine.

"I had seen one of those two bells you spoke of on a tier below." I got straight to the point without wasting time. "But where is the second one located?"

"It can be found on the same tire which leads to the mechanism." Bolgor clarified. "We placed it inside another embedded passage not far from the glass-like chamber and marked this encrypted area with a wall-mounted symbol of a dragon."

As the hunter unfolded this information to me I could not help but anger at myself for my own inattentiveness. Had I not been so focused on tracking down those worshippers that had assassinated Moldgar I might have noticed that hidden entrance inside one of the corridors that I crossed.

"In this case we should do the following," I appealed to all three warriors, assuming the instructive intonation. "I will accompany you all to the lower tier so you can take a position near the local bell. Once you're stationed there I will set forth to the third tier and find the other bell. When we take over both bells we will be able to toll them synchronically and break our path to the mechanism."

"But how will we coordinate our actions?" asked Bolgor. "The bells are too widely separated; we won't be able to keep in touch."

"Worry not, Bolgor." I said in a reassuring tone. "As soon as I find the second bell I will contact your minds telepathically and give you the command to ring your one."

Once again amazement rounded the human's eyes, rendering him speechless for several seconds.

"You can even do _that_?!" he marveled.

"I'm actually doing it right now," I stated and it seemed to have turned Bolgor's amazement to disquietude. "For it is the only way I am able to have my words heard by those I speak to."

Bolgor appeared to be greatly tensed with all the new insights I had revealed to him, but he promptly shook himself out of it.

"Then I guess we have settled everything." he reckoned firmly.

"One more thing," I added, raising a talon into the air for emphasis. "If on our way we get ambushed by the vampires or their human worshippers, try to avoid confronting them in combat as much as possible. As I've already said, none of them is able destroy me, so I will have no troubles handling them all on my own. You have to keep your casualties at minimum so we can incarnate our plan, so try to keep yourselves out of the harm's way."

"We will do our best." the scarlet-armored mortal uttered meekly.

"Then let us hurry, for the time is not on our side!" I declared and girded myself for some long and fast running.


	7. Chapter 7: Return of the Favor

**Return of the Favor**

Once again united with the remainders of the vampire hunters' squadron I hurried to pick our way toward the lower tier where one of the two bells we were looking to take over was located. Now that I was already familiar with the layout of the cathedral's corridors I easily oriented myself in the mazes of passages and confidently led the way for my human companions to follow. However, their knowledge of the system of secret tunnels was a worthy skill as well, and at some point of our travel it proved to be valuable for another time.

"Wait, Raziel!" Bolgor shouted after me when I was about to turn round another corner.

I looked back over my shoulder and saw the leader of the hunters' squadron standing about thirty yards away from me and leaning upon the wall with his arm. He was clearly out of breath after the hard running, and his brothers Zolyn and Ansek appeared to be badly emaciated too. It was needless to say that these humans could not move as fast as I did, and the exertion it had taken them to catch up with me must have been dreadfully exhausting.

I ran back to them, thinking that they wanted me to allow them a brief respite, but then much to my pleasure Bolgor dissuaded me out of this assumption.

"There is another concealed passage here that can save us a lot of time." he said hoarsely, visibly trying to recollect his strengths as quickly as possible.

Upon this phrase one of the arbalesters walked about ten more feet past me and pressed some brick in the wall, while the other one did the same still standing where he was. The indicative groaning noise was instantly heard from the left wall and then one of its huge bricked fragments moved sideward, revealing a long flight of curved stairs leading down into darkness.

Bolgor stood erect and walked to the opposite side of the corridor where he took a torch from the wall, then returned to the new-opened entrance.

"Come along!" he called on and hastily entered the tunnel, his brothers inviolately stepping after their commander.

I was the last one to walk into the passage, and once I did the shunt fragment of the wall that opened the way for us to enter immediately moved back into its place, shutting almost pressure-tight.

And so we went down the stairs into the obscurity, the flames of Bolgor's torch and my ghostly sword lighting our dark path from two sides. The walls of the passage were thickly lined with dust, indicating that it had not been opened for a very long time. Evidently neither the Zephonim, nor the vampire worshippers were aware of all these immured sections inside the cathedral, or at least of this particular one.

As we kept on descending deeper I began to notice some strange murals painted on the tunnel walls. Their style pointedly related to the human artistry, which was recognizable by the distinctive profile and side views of the portrayed figures. Yet the themes of the pictured events were far more difficult for me to decipher. The first mural I discerned depicted a group of humans worshipping a creature with multiple pairs of arms and two heads. The next mural showed the same two-headed multi-armed creature lying defeated at the feet of his former worshippers that were now praising another being that looked like a winged dragon. And finally, the third wall painting to come into my view described another group of humans drawing up in line to give alms to a creature that resembled some kind of a gigantic sea-serpent.

All the murals were made in a relatively easy technique without any precise details or peculiarities of the painted figures, which gave me an impression that their authors were more focused on sending a certain message to those who were meant to see them in the future rather than recreating the sight of these scenes.

"Do you know what events are depicted in these murals?" I asked one of the two crossbowmen pacing ahead of me.

The one marching closer to me gave me a brief look through the bars in his black helmet and then glimpsed at the last painting with the serpent as if he had never noticed it there before.

"No." he said without much pondering. "These pictures had been made by the architects of the cathedral centuries before we were even born."

He paused for a second then added, "Seems like pieces of some arcane mythology to me."

I made no reply, realizing that he was simply no right person to discuss such topics anyway. Nonetheless the information about the age of these paintings was rather worthwhile in its own way, for it raised another elaborative question: if these frescos really were that antique, were the events reflected in them the mere folklore fantasies of their authors or in fact some reality-related occurrences that had either happened by the time they were portrayed or were predicted to happen in eons to come?

Shortly afterwards the hidden passage brought us to the intended target as Bolgor found a lever in the dark and pulled it to open another wall fragment in our way. We walked out of the tunnel into another empty corridor - a complete twin of the majority of corridors we had already been in, with no differential signs of the scenery to mark our next step.

"Do you remember which way is the bell to be looked for?" I asked Bolgor, seeing that the passage we were in now offered little hint.

"Absolutely." the mortal replied steadily and carelessly threw his torch aside. "Our way lies to the right."

Without losing a second we immediately followed Bolgor's direction, each of us again beginning to run as fast as one's legs could move. Just like before I ran ahead of everyone, my enhanced speed carrying me away from the hunters for a quite considerable distance. Though the passage Bolgor led us through had already greatly accelerated our progress I was still determined to reach both bells at the earliest possible moment before the Zephonim or their human zealots would have been able to suspect anything and unearth our intents.

But soon it became manifest that these hopes were not meant to come to fruition when all of a sudden I detected the imminence of another unfriendly ghoulish creature on our way. Strangely enough this time there was no sound of rattling arachnid legs or trails of vampiric aroma in the air to disturb my senses, but merely a very untypical, but distinct visceral feeling of impending danger. And though I was unable to pinpoint from where exactly it was coming I was dead sure that the stalker was somewhere close, so I started warily whipping around myself with the Reaver raised at the ready.

"What happened, Raziel?" Bolgor hailed me from behind.

"Stand back!" I shouted, halting them with a gesture of my left arm. "We're about to get ambushed!"

The hunters stopped in their tracks and alarmingly drew their weapons, preparing to meet the upcoming attack. Our enemy, however, was still nowhere to be seen, while my sensation of it being somewhere nearby just would not stop ripping up my inside like an itch that could not be scratched. I still kept looking in every direction and so did the warriors, all of us trying to see or hear any signs of the insidious threat.

"Where are they?" bawled out Bolgor. "I don't see anything!"

I left his question unanswered, still continuing to concentrate on whatever could signify the apparition of our foes.

Then after a short moment of deadly silence I heard some rapping coming from above. I glanced there and saw the ceiling beginning to creak and crack in several places with dust and sand heavily cascading down from all the clefts. It lasted several seconds until the cracked area finally collapsed completely, huge bricked fragments falling down with wallop and kicking up thick yellow clouds of dust that momentarily blanketed the entire corridor.

I sheltered my eyes with my left forearm, trying to keep at least partial view of what was happening, but once I discerned the first silhouettes of dystrophic spider-like figures starting to drop from the aperture the source of aggression became pretty clear even despite the poor visibility.

As the dusty clouds subsided there were already about seven Zephonim - both adults and fledglings - present in the corridor, half of them turned to face me and half of them turned to face the vampire hunters. I did not know if they were anyhow aware of our plan and the part the humans were playing in it, but they were clearly intent upon demolishing all of us at one go. I realized that now I would have to rapidly battle through the whole pack of these ghouls to prevent them from getting their hands on Bolgor and his brothers, otherwise the top of this contaminated cloister would never be attained.

Suddenly one more Zephonim dropped into the middle of the vampires' sprawl, its back at first turned to me. This one was another adult, yet there was something unusual about its appearance: the contours of its body seemed to be surrounded by some lurid glowing blue aura like the one the inhabitants of the spirit world usually had.

Then the monster turned its snout to me and I beheld the same blue light gleaming from its eyes, lastly grasping the reason for that disturbing feeling of the approaching hazard that I had recently experienced.

This Zephonim staring at me now with its burning sepulchral gaze was a revived vampire, similar to the one I had met before on the Melchiahim clan territory. Once dead, but now reanimated back to life with the return of its wandering soul to its corpse this ghoul was now like me a dweller of both material and spectral dimensions, which is why I had sensed its forthcoming even without any physical signs of its presence. But the worst part about this similarity between us was that this beast was now a soul-devouring creature too, which made it capable of obliterating me for perpetuity.

Apparently it was a little precipitant for me earlier to have told Bolgor that my enemies could not destroy me, as I had cleanly forgotten about those of them that could invade this realm from the Underworld. After having recalled the battle with that revived Melchiahim vampire in the Necropolis and how it had nearly decimated me within an inch of my existence by draining my soul energy I comprehended that now there weren't only the lives of my human companions, but my own at stake in this combat. The only difference between the previous fight and the current one was that now I had the Soul Reaver to even my chances against this living dead fiend and its pack-mates. This time I had to retain the sword's power by all manner of means, for one slightest mistake could be separating me from the most fatal issue.

Galvanized by the extremeness of the situation I providently took the defending stance, leaving the privilege of the first strike to my opponents. The Zephonim did not linger to take that opportunity and advanced on me straightaway, two of them concurrently clinging to the aisle walls and shooting web at me.

I jumped back, evading both strings of sticky substance, as in the very next breath another arachnid lurched at me with its spiked arm cocked for a diagonal blow.

Having already become used to these beasts' speed and fighting style after all the skirmishes I had had with them I managed to sidestep the attack in one split-second move and then slew round full circle, cutting the monster across its fibrous torso in two with an inverted swing of the wraith blade.

The Reaver cried out a howl of triumphant gluttony once the exorcised soul of the devolved vampire was sucked into its flame, as I quickly turned my attention to the remaining combatants. The ghouls looked to be shocked at how easily I had eliminated their partner and no longer seemed to be hurrying to throw themselves at me.

After a short moment of constraint the two wall-hanging Zephonim started slowly and cautiously crawling in my direction, while the revived one remained standing on its place in the rear, its posture though discernibly showing that it was ready to spring into action at any moment. Obviously these wretches were trying to lure me out of the defensive position and then assault me collectively, but I knew better than to fall for it and continued to patiently wait for a suitable chance to counter.

Several seconds of constrained duel of tenacities passed and then the Zephonim on the left wall had lastly snapped and leapt at me with an aggressive shriek. This was the very movement I had been anticipating and I promptly lunged forth as well, skillfully sliding under the flinging beast and shearing it with the wraith blade between its legs.

The arachnid ghast thumped down on the floor and began to scream in unadulterated pain, savagely spilling a crimson spray of blood from its cleaved groin.

I swiftly climbed back to my feet, looking to capitalize, but then the revived ghoul standing abaft had eventually decided to join the fight, dashing at me with both its forepaws spread for a hard shot. The thrust didn't catch me off-guard, but it was still very abrupt and I only managed to roll away from it without applying any countering manouevre.

Once my feet hinged upon the solid ground after this tumbleset I rapidly darted back at the living dead ghoul, aiming at its eerie fanged muzzle.

To my surprise the revived Zephonim didn't try to dodge my attack, but instead sped forth at me in the same manner, its clawed forelimb shot directly into my face. It was almost as if the vampire knew that I was apprehensive of getting injured and was ready to run into my assault for the sake of still inflicting damage on me.

In a fraction of a second I realized that I needed to somehow redirect my move and writhed in mid-air like a serpent, avoiding the monster's streaking talons by a hair-breadth's, but doing this at the cost of missing my own shot as well.

We landed about ten feet away from each other then simultaneously turned around, our firing gazes meeting once more in ambience of boiling fury and adrenaline. To the left of me the sounds of obdurate battle between the hunters' cohort and the rest of the Zephonim's pack could be heard, but I tried to put it aside for now, knowing that I could not afford to be distracted until I was done with my most formidable adversary.

The resuscitated vampire and I started slowly circling each other, each of us biding one's time for a moment to deliver another lightning-fast stroke.

Suddenly my vision caught a glimpse of the distant wall behind my enemy's back and I noticed that the fourth Zephonim that used to hang on it seconds away was no longer there. I comprehended that in the full rage of the struggle I had lost the sight of that beast, and now its unpredictable location could put me in some very undesirable jeopardy.

I fluently swept eyes over the place, trying to spot the skulking ghoul, as the returned-to-life Zephonim instantly took advantage of my disorientation and pounced at me.

I ducked from the rush, but this time the deformed vampire didn't stop there and continued to take further swipes at me, forcing me back to the passage wall. The creature's lithesome moves would not leave me neither time, nor room for a precise counterstroke, and I realized that I had to change my tactic to get out of this onset.

After evading another swishing blow I jerkily leapt aside out of the gollywog's way and rolled toward the distant wall. The Zephonim hastened to creep upon me, but I quickly recovered my feet and drove the beast back with a threatening flourish of the Reaver blade.

The undead brute took several precautious steps backwards then bended all its limbs with a loud crackle, looking to take a spring at me. Once it did, I made a back somersault, planting with my feet against the hind wall and then propelling forward with acceleration.

As the being landed on the ground and then saw me diving at it with the wraith blade swung behind my head for a crushing blow it crustily bounced back, but for this once my swoop was too fast to be eluded that easy and I still managed to graze the ghoul's snout with the sword's flaming nib.

The revived Zephonim recoiled back from the contact with the Reaver's ethereal corpus, getting its whole face burned and its lower jaw split nearly in half. As the wounded arachnid began to screech and pluck at its scorched and gashed muzzle with blood heavily dripping on the floor through its sharp claws I lastly became ready to recapture the initiative and finish off the monster for good.

But when I made a move to send the ghoul's raptorial spirit back to where it had come from something abruptly snatched me by the right shoulder and dragged me back with force. The unexpectedness of the jerk made me lose balance and fall, my husk getting lugged hard against the bricked fundament like a sack of bones.

I angrily glanced over my shoulder and found it being stuck to a thick mesh of cobweb stretching forth toward the shadowed corner of the corridor. This revelation got me even more enraged and I viciously tore the web-string with my left-hand talons then jumped back to my feet, eager to confront my lurking assailant.

In a few seconds a pair of radiating diabolical red eyes peered out the corner's gloomy space and then the skeletal frame of another spider-like ghoul stepped into the light, its clawed paws still holding the other end of the cobweb. Without much heart-searching I fathomed that it was the very ghoul that had escaped my field of vision earlier before.

Infuriated with that sneak-attack it had carried on me I discarded my defense strategy and for this once charged first.

The Zephonim skewed from the lethal sweep of the Reaver to the left then attempted for a backlash, but I countered by chopping its face with my free hand talons.

The blow momentarily rendered the beast blindsided, allowing me to gain the momentum and drive the wraith blade straight into its gaunt thorax.

With a flash of power the Zephonim's bony carcass exploded, its charred remains hurtling almost all over the passage.

As the Reaver joyfully gobbled another unbound soul I redirected my attention back to my previous adversary. The revived arachnid had already recovered after its injury, the wound on its jaw almost completely healed with only the blackened scald from the wraith blade's fire still covering most of its snout. And so had recovered another Zephonim standing behind it whom I had maimed in the groin earlier before. Despite me having been dominant in this combat so far I had only managed to get rid of two ghouls by now, while two more still remained alive, including my most serious foe. With their regeneration ability the vampires could not be neutralized even with the most powerful shots unless only they impaled, decapitated or implicitly eviscerated them. I had to make my further attacks more precise and direct them at the monsters' most vital organs if I wanted to prevail in this confrontation.

But with such proficient enemies as the Zephonim it was easier said than done.

Both Zephonim again started slowly pacing about me, looking to be trying to surround me from subtending sides.

Suddenly the ordinary vampire yarely jumped to the right wall then bounced off it upwards, hitching with all its limbs to the ceiling. Then the predator rapidly scaled the vertical ground in my direction, its scraggy paws moving like crazy.

Sensing that the beast was up to something disastrous I swiftly leapt into the air after it, trying to knock it off the ceiling with the sword.

At the nick of time the Zephonim dropped back on the ground, snaking off my vault and causing me to land on the floor with my back turned to it. As I did, the ghoul jumped me from behind, brutally biting into my flesh with everything it had.

The drastic energy depletion at once gave me the sickening feeling of faintness, but this faded in comparison with the perception of the most terrible thing to have happened – the loss of the Soul Reaver's power.

The feral vampire on my back continued to sink its fangs and talons deeper into the cloak of matter covering my astral body as I fondly kept on striving to throw it off me.

Quite by chance I got an insight of what was ahead of me and saw the revived Zephonim also making a menacing move toward our grappling duo.

As the living dead ghast swung its forelimb at me I realized that the things were about to get even blacker and brusquely twisted about myself, exposing the arachnid on my back to the coming blow. The shot immediately wiped the Zephonim off my spine, letting me get out of its 'embracement' and temporarily retreat a safe distance from the epicenter of this butchery.

As I recollected my strength and looked backwards a most fascinating spectacle came into my view: the Zephonim that had just accidentally taken the undead vampire's hit for me was now getting its soul energy siphoned by the latter. Apparently it happened automatically each time a revived ghoul injured another being, but in any case the soul-sucking beast did not seem to hurry to break this streaming flux of energy flowing from its partner's wound into its voracious mouth.

The deflating Zephonim was screeching in agony, experiencing perhaps the most terrifying and excruciating feeling possible – the gradual bereavement of its living essence. But an ordinary vampire soul was not as adapted as the spiritual essence of a wraith or a specter and could not sustain such exhaustion for long, so in less than a few moments the arachnid's spirit was already drained to the very last drop. When it happened, the energy flux between the vampires disappeared, and the gaze of the desolated one went unseeing before its emptied body turned into dust like a crumbled statue.

The eyes of the revived Zephonim glared with repletion and then the monster set them on me, the glowing blue halo delineating its body now becoming even brighter than before. After the devourment of its fellow's soul the burn on the ghoul's muzzle had vanished completely, but the beast still didn't seem to be satiated yet and was now as before regarding me with a hungry gaze, its vile chaps slobbering detestably.

Behind me the sounds of massacre between the mortals and the vampires still wafted loudly, but I could not even cast my glance there, being aware that taking eyes off my opponent even for this instant could be a fatal distraction. The ultimate fight with the living dead arachnid was inevitable, so I vigorously spread my talons wide then squatted knees and flexed my spine, taking a convenient position for a quick lunge.

At last it was going to be a one-on-one struggle, with no other ghouls to help my rival, but with no wraith blade to help me as well.

Once more the undead Zephonim and I began to slowly walk lines around each other like two wild lions that were about to decide in a mortal combat which one of them was the true monarch of all beasts. The revived vampire measured me a good while with its flamboyant stare; its slow monotonous moves making me feel nearly mesmerized. Only a couple of minutes had passed since the very beginning of this brawl, but the tension filling the air of this place evoked sensation that the fight had already been lasting for hours.

Then a tiny flicker ran over the ghoul's burning eyes and it tore at me all in a breath.

It was my heightened reaction and reflexes that saved me from the slice of talons across my mid-section, and once the danger blew over I instantly took the offensive and charged back at the Zephonim.

The monster responded with a dodge of its own, flitting away from my attack so fast that its scrawny bulk almost blurred in the air. With both of us being extremely nimble and agile this confrontation was manifestly not going to be an easy one.

We started exchanging mutual repetitive feints and recharges, both moving featly and dexterously as if we were almost dancing in the midst of the carnage between the humans and the vampires taking place a dozen yards away from us.

For a long moment none of us was able to hit one another, but at some point I managed to outperform the Zephonim and catch it with my cloven hand across its torso.

My blow budged the arachnid off its place for several feet backwards, its black hind limbs harshly nuzzling against the floor from impact.

Seeing that my thrust had thrown the ghoul off its stride I dartingly bolted at it again to deliver the winning stroke, but then in the dying second the reanimated vampire sprinkled a blob of soupy web from its wrist right into my eyes.

Blinded, I flitted past the revived Zephonim by inertia and dropped on my knees then started feverishly scratching at my face to dispose of this goo the beast shot at me.

The whole process took only several seconds of my time, but even that was more than enough to provide my adversary with the margin of speed it needed.

The moment I managed to peel the viscid substance off my eyes the returned-to-life beast fiercely ravened at me and slashed me to the back of my neck. The attack took me almost entirely by surprise and I fell face-burst with no single chance to keep my feet under me. In the same second the horrifying sensation that I had been so afraid of enduring again had finally overcome me and I instantly felt the strength of my very being beginning to bleed out of me.

I looked about me and clapped eyes upon the painfully familiar streamline of soul energy being carried away from my body into the soughing maw of the resurrected vampire. Just as before in the Necropolis it felt like my whole essence was being drained into nothingness, slipping out of my grasp like water through fingers.

Calling on the remaining reserves of my strength I forced myself into standing and tried to break the soul-devouring contact by distancing myself from the Zephonim. But the predator knew better than to let me escape so cheaply and at once seized me by the legs with two slings of webbing, again making me collapse to the ground and then starting to drag me back to itself like its captured prey.

Prostrated and dispersed I attempted to sink my talons into the bricked fundament to repress the draught, but the energy was leaving me too rapidly and my muscular power slackened altogether. Unable to withstand any longer I gasped in dismay and helplessly hurled down the floor, too weakened to even concentrate on retreating to the spectral realm.

Slowly my spiritual frame began to fade away and once again in a long period I felt the dreadful sense of the impending end that I didn't expect to come here and now envelop me. It was not the first time when I was going through this torturous state of being on the verge of absolute abolition, but now the idea of dying at the hands of a being little more sentient than a bogus animal was making this torment feel not only agonizing but humiliating as well.

With blousing veil of dizziness starting to cover my vision I feebly stared at the blurry figure of the revived Zephonim in front of me edaciously engorging my soul energy, its obnoxious face looking almost elated.

As the desolation of my spirit came to its maximum my eyes began to close flaccidly, embracing the inglorious defeat that now seemed ineluctable.

The grip of doom seemed to be already closing shut on me when all of a sudden I heard a raucous squeal of anguish coming from afore and then sensed that the last drops of my soul energy that I thought were about to be drained dry now mysteriously remained intact. For several seconds after this I continued to lie on the ground almost insentient until the poor residue of power left in me began to bring my spirit back to reality.

Once my vision cleared a bit and the first ray-lets of conscience returned to me I discerned that the flux through which my living essence was being siphoned off was missing, while the Zephonim that had been trying to exenterate me was hysterically howling in anguish and clutching with its elbowed front limbs at two metal bolts protruding from the back of its bloodied skull.

Before my clouded mind could even figure out what had happened my eyes saw Bolgor furiously racing at the revived vampire with its sword swung wide for a deadly shot almost in the equally same fashion he was when he came to my aid during our previous fight with the arachnid ghouls.

As this wisp of memory illuminated my inner self I perceived that for the second time in a row these humans had selflessly come to my help even despite my having told them not to risk their lives on my part. And if the first time it really was not that necessary, then for this once they had truly saved me from what could have been my ultimate downfall.

But unlike the ghasts we had battled heretofore this undead beast would not stay down even after two precise headshots and still managed to counterattack Bolgor with one brutal swipe of its forelimb that knocked the blade out of the man's hands and even tore a massive piece of plate from his armor.

The leader of the vampire hunters' squadron crumpled down and the head-wounded fiend began to pace toward its flattened victim, still grunting from the attenuating trauma. Then the Zephonim leaned over the warrior's hunched up body and aimed its right limb for what was probably going to be a deathblow, making me realize that the terrifying demise I had just evaded by inches could now be about to greet Bolgor.

My power was already starting to come back, but the body was still too extenuated to even sit up straight and the reserves of my soul energy were so poor that it would take only a couple of minutes for the flesh decay to shove me away to the world of the dead.

It was only through sheer force of will that I managed to align on my feet, struggling the trembling feeling of limpness with every move.

Once able to stand more or sure I summoned all the strength that remained in me and leapt at the resurrected Zephonim from behind, drawing my talons all the way through its unsuspecting back.

The monster whose sense of danger was now blunted by its injury gave another startled ear-piercing cry of pain as my left hand reached for its heart and squashed it like a rotten apple.

When I felt the warmness of blood-steam starting to run down my arms I took my hands out of the ghoul's spine, letting its skeletal carcass fall face-plant.

After that a new ethereal form began to burst forth from the vampire's cadaver like a snake crawling from a narrow hole. It was a vampire wraith – a devolved vampiric soul that had once managed to reinhabit its former corporeal vessel and was now being forced to abandon it for good. The world of the living was not its native realm and here its form was only a faint outline of itself, and even that was growing less distinct with every second.

Still the moment the wraith clawed its way through the Zephonim's corpse its visage temporarily became revealed to both me and Bolgor, and the leader of the hunters' squadron goggled at the inconceivable being emerging before him in intrinsic horror.

Once the phantom predator completely erupted from the flesh it used to occupy it wailed loudly and then disappeared altogether, leaving me with no soul energy to feast on at all. Unlike the ordinary souls the essences of vampire wraiths could not be absorbed on the physical plane and thus escaped into the spectral realm as soon as they broke loose from their carnal shells.

The last attack on the revived Zephonim had pushed me to the limits of my durability and now that the combat was finally over I could not help but drop to my knees with fatigue.

Beside me Bolgor lay frazzled as well, breathing heavily and dripping with sweat. But if his stamina was slowly, but steadily recuperating, then mine was only depleting none the worse with every passing moment, leisurely approaching the state of total desolation.

After a while Bolgor managed to raise himself upon an elbow and speak to me, "Th-thank you…" he murmured with a hearable painstaking.

I tried to pull myself back up too, but my eroding body just would not respond and I had to answer him with my face still nestled into the floor, "I'm the one who should be thankful in this situation..."

Bolgor said nothing at first, then smiled wryly the way he seemed to have a habit of doing from time to time.

"I told you that you _would_ need help." he giggled, but his giggle quickly turned into cough.

In the meantime Bolgor's brothers Zolyn and Ansek had come up to us. Both arbalesters were eminently bruised and macerated, all hobbling slightly and missing several pieces of their heavy black armor here and there. Their quivers were empty, which meant that they had run out of arrows and the very last ones they had were spent on the living dead Zephonim.

"Are you alright, commander?" one of the crossbowmen asked.

"No worse than it ought to be." their leader replied in a confident tone and his brethren helped him get up.

Once on his feet again Bolgor took several seconds to gather his breath then gave me his hand in a proud and respectful gesture of help, which I comfortably grabbed by the cuff of the gauntlet and constrainedly pulled myself up.

When I rose to my feet I found them to be still shaking with slackness, threatening to drop out of me at any moment. Somehow I managed to keep them under me, but then my whole carcass began to blink and fade, indicating that it was a matter of seconds when my physical body would utterly dissolve into nihility.

At the sight of my evanescing frame Bolgor sharply shrank back from me, almost knocking off his fellows standing behind him.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked with a mixture of concern and puzzlement.

"My energy is dwindling…" I croaked. "I need a soul to feed…"

All three hunters exchanged glances, the one and only visible on Bolgor's face displaying pure bewilderment.

"Is there anything we can do, Raziel?" he referred to me uncertainly.

"Proceed to the first bell and wait for me there." I replied. "I'll be back in less than no time."

Before any of the warriors was able to say something in return, I released the matter around my haggard body, letting it dive into the liquid-like atmosphere of the spirit world. Only in this very moment I caught the notion that my promise to be back 'in less than no time' was a more than apt figure of speech, for in the realm I was entering now the concept of time was the one of no meaning at all.


	8. Chapter 8: For Whom the Bell Tolls

**For Whom the Bell Tolls**

The shift to the spectral realm instantly restored a small amount of my energy, but it was only some time before the undead aura of the Underworld endued me with enough stamina to feel firm on the ground again. With time standing frozen-still in this dimension I could remain sitting on the one and same place until the spiritual plane would heal me outright if only it hadn't been for my hunger that was now stinging me like a thousand needles after the terrible energy attenuation I had recently endured. Besides, I also had a planar portal to seek out, so as much as I would have loved to rest a bit and enjoy the 'invigorating' atmosphere of the world of the dead I had to make an effort and start looking for some souls to feed on and for a conduit leading to the material realm.

And I had a feeling that I knew where all of this could be found at once.

With stableness returned to my body I ran toward where the hunters and I were initially holding on for, but this time with no one by my side to guide my way. The surroundings were badly distorted by the haze of the spectral realm as well, which made it evermore difficult for me to orient myself throughout all the winding passages. Nevertheless the configuration of the corridors had seemed familiar to me ever since we had walked into this tier from the hidden tunnel and now I had a solid suspicion that the chamber with the bell I was heading to could not be too far away.

Soon after crossing several annexes I found the very aperture in the wall I had already entered earlier before, gladly conceiving that my intuition did not betray me for this once as well.

I went into the recess, recognizing the hideously warped tubes I had used formerly to climb on the upped tier and the thin curtain of cobweb that shielded the part of the chamber where the bell stood.

But far more important was that the chamber turned out to be dammed with multiple souls thrashing about it through its unrespirable air. Since the Zephonim used to have a nest here I had guessed from the outset that the lost spirits were to be gathering in this very room, for the vampire larvae also had to be fed with human blood from time to time.

I put my hand onto my shoulder cape, preparing to draw it down and take in all the precious essences when suddenly several beast-like figures began to scramble out of the breach in the web-curtain, all snorting and slithering unpleasantly. Those were sluagh - three carnivores of the spirit world that must have already inhabited this 'goldmine' of a place and were pointedly not going to give it away without a fight.

Though these scavengers had to be well-nourished and thus strong and bold I still decided not to trouble myself devising some sophisticated strategies and galloped at their pack slapdash.

The three sluagh clearly did not expect such a quick start of the brawl, two of them barely managing to recoil from the lethal arc of the Reaver blade, but the one standing nearest to me getting the phantom sword ranking all across its gelatinous torso. The creature instantly lost its cohesion and became transparent, its ethereal form disappearing in the green fire of the wraith blade with an agonizing yelp.

The two remaining parasites then attempted to synchronically assault me from two sides, but I had foreseen this kind of attack and swung the blade full-circle around me, slicing both their chaps with one swipe. Green slimy blood spattered from the sluagh's malformed mugs, but this time my blow was not so devastating and their tremelloid compositions remained collected.

Not losing a moment I pressed on and quickly darted at the injured beast that was in front of me, poking my weapon into its spectral flesh so deep that it burst out of its back. The creature's defense got destroyed and its deformed body melted away in the Reaver's flame, its energy becoming mine.

As the second sluagh perished the last survived one immediately quailed and ran for dear life, loudly stamping with its hind limbs against the ground. Of course, I had no problem overhauling it and devouring its cowardly bulk as well, but for now there was no great need to, so I easily let it escape for the sake of finally being left alone with all the souls I was dying to gulp down.

Once the vermin fled I pulled down the cowl and gleefully let all the sparks of vitalizing energy whirling above me right into the cavernous hole in my chest. The long-awaited meal felt as nourishing as ever it could be, fortifying my whole body and giving me an intense surplus of energy.

When I was finished the chamber plummeted into the dense darkness of the spirit world, for there was no more light of the wandering souls to illuminate its space.

At the same time my peripheral vision managed to obtain a glimpse of another spotlight area and as I turned my eyes toward it I comprehended that it was coming from the other part of the room that was sheltered by the shawl of cobweb.

I walked into the slot in the net and beheld that the luminescence was being produced by a burning circle of dancing ions that was flaring on the floor right in front of the bell that stood in this part of the chamber. A conduit to the world of the living in the midst of the very location I needed to return to was an unbelievably lucky find and I rushed to step upon it to and make use of this fortune.

The world around me mixed and flowed and then the plane of reality began to take shape, retrieving its normal colors, smells and forms. Although the shift from one dimension to another had already stopped seeming as something unique to me I still could not help fluently surveying the changed surroundings once I completely emerged in the material realm.

The examination of the environment kept on holding my attention captive for several more seconds until I heard the distant sounds of approaching footsteps.

I went back into the previous field of the chamber and saw Bolgor, Zolyn and Ansek already entering it through the aperture in the wall. As Bolgor clapped his eyes upon me already standing in the middle of the room he crustily came to a dead stop, his brothers behind him nearly clashing into his back.

"You! Here?!" he exclaimed in a puzzled voice. "But how?"

"It's a long story," I replied tonelessly. "And we don't have time for vapid conversations now."

Bolgor's confused face quickly assumed a collected expression and he silently made several steps toward me, showing his readiness for business.

"Have you found the bell already?" he asked me, uncertainly regarding the altered scenery of the chamber.

"It's right here." I said and showed him to the recess in the web with an inviting gesture of my left arm.

The leader of the hunters' squadron walked into the hole in the net, uncomfortably crouching under the low hanging tatters of the web with Zolyn and Ansek as always submissively stepping after him. Once inside, the humans started thoroughly examining the web-cloaked bell as if checking whether it was still functional.

"So…" Bolgor referred to me when I walked in as well. "I suppose that now we just have to stay here as you instructed and wait for your… signal."

"Right." I returned briefly.

"Are you sure you don't need any of us to accompany you?" he asked.

"No." I answered steadily. "You all are too weakened, so you need to hold together in case the vampires find you here. That attack on us in the corridor was not an occasional one – the ghouls must have already unearthed our intentions and will now stop at nothing to hound us all down."

Bolgor frowned at this, but then nodded approvingly.

"Just try to remain here as quiet as the grave until I give you the command to toll your bell." I proceeded. "Once we get rid of those walls that barricade the room with the mechanism I will immediately return after you and bring you there."

Bolgor took a deep breath and stiffened.

"Then apparently there's nothing else for us to do now but to wish you the best of luck." the mortal said and knelt before me yet again, his brethren this once doing this almost synchronically with him.

At first I wanted to smirk at this importunate display of complaisance, but then curbed my temper and patiently waited until all three hunters were through with their gestures of reverence.

When the humans rose from their knees I slowly turned round and started walking out of the chamber. But before I crossed the recess in the thread something made me slow my pace for an instant and turn my head to the mortals, then say the words I had never said before to anyone both in my life and afterlife,

"Be careful."

* * *

I thought later, while I ran back to the third tier of the cathedral, that perchance the time I had lately spent in the company of Bolgor and his brothers had made me too sentimental. The fact that I was starting to show signs of concern about these mortals felt as non-natural as it was unexpected. Genuinely, even despite their having come to my aid already twice in a while I still had no faintest reason to trust them. They themselves had told me earlier that their people had been long awaiting the arrival of this so-called 'Messiah' that would support them in their war against the vampire yoke, so it was very probable that they were simply trying to benefit from me and have me get rid of their surpassing adversaries they could not handle on their own.

But even if it truly was so, what difference did it make in the end?

For now I needed their assistance just as much as they needed mine. Besides, even if they were not acting in all sincerity they still had done more for me then my own vampire brethren did when I was ordered into the abyss by Kain. Apparently it was high time for me to rise above this inculcated neglect toward the human kin that was brought up in me during my early vampire years. As fledglings we used to be taught that the mortals were an inferior race of weak, cowardly hypocrites with their minds set only for money, food and debauchery. But in the long run it was hypocrisy of the vampires, not the humans that had condemned me to this loathsome existence I had to lead now. Evidently one didn't have to forget that dishonor as well as its opposite quality – nobility – could pertain to inferior races just as much as to superior ones.

With the tangled configuration of the edifice's corridors already being explored by me earlier before the way back to the lower tier now seemed to me much shorter than the first time I got to cross these sinuous mazes. Still I had to rack my memory more than once to recall all the twisting routes that Ariel used to guide me through during my previous travel.

Ever since my refusal to follow her direction the imprisoned female specter had been less convivial toward my pursuits; in fact, she had refused any form of constructive parlay. And if at first I was a bit worried with such reaction and even uncertain about my having done the right thing, then now the only attitude I had left to this situation was disappointment. Certainly I expected more from the spirit of the former member of the Circle of Nine than such a childish display of arrogance and rigidity as a silent treatment. But the worst part of my disappointment was not Ariel's behavior itself, but the sad fact that for a thousandth time already I was forced to accept that regardless of my actions and intentions I still had absolutely no one to confide in. Each time I would begin to trust someone I would indispensably become a pawn in this someone's games and machinations with the one whom I believed to be my adherer and mentor turning into my tormentor instead. First Kain, then the Elder God, and now even Ariel… Maybe someone I could call a true ally or at least a companion just was not meant to be a part of this long way I was walking in pursuit of my destiny…

Ere long my wandering thoughts got embraced by the realization that I had just reached the chamber that had formerly brought me to the lair of the vampire worshippers.

I studied the ambience and found out that the movable fragment of the wall that was built to block the hidden doorway through which the room could be exited had long since slid back into its place. But now that I knew the specific area where it was located I didn't waste time on searches for the triggering brick and simply forced my talons into the fundament then tore out the whole section of bricks with one vigorous hitch.

The wall burst at the seams with the newly formed hole in its fundament beginning to fall into pieces at edges, as I unceremoniously threw the torn fragment aside and emphatically stepped into the revealed passage. From now on I knew I had to be extremely attentive while walking through the corridors, for the immured church-bell I was looking for was somewhere round.

So I started striding across the passages, carefully examining every inch of space around me in search of any sign of the walled-up location. Bolgor told me that the encrypted area with the bell inside was marked with the symbol of a dragon, so conceptually it had to be easy to spot.

Nonetheless the seeking took me a bit longer that I thought and it was only after about half an hour of constrained inspection of the surroundings that I was able to notice the sought-for token upon one of the walls. The painting was of the size of a brick and was all scratched over, which made it evermore difficult to discern. Apparently it got partially obliterated as a result of the Zephonim's frequent clinging to the walls and scraping the fundament with their clawed limbs, but still the features of the painted mythical creature could be well distinguished if desired.

As I looked closer at the symbol I recognized that its style was almost completely identical to the mural of a dragon I had seen inside the hidden tunnel I traversed together with the vampire hunters, only of a smaller size. As far as I was familiar with the human folklore the theme of dragons had always been given too much unreasoned attention there, but this time I had a feeling it was different. Somehow this repetitive illustration of the ancient winged serpent throughout the cathedral had to be vital, but how exactly I was not yet ready to tell.

Anyway, now I had more important things to do than puzzling my wits with these strange pictures, so I promptly shook myself out of all the irrelevant thoughts and refocused on my primary task. If this really was my required location, then all that remained was to batter down the blocking wall and break the way to the hidden bell.

With this objective in view I took several long steps backwards, then sped up and strongly darted at the wall with my left hand clenched into a fist and swung for a hard blow.

The wall turned out to be thinner and frailer than I expected and I easily rammed all the way through it, almost falling forward by inertia after crushing a hole in it. There appeared that the architects had established such fragile brickwork on purpose so it could be torn down effortlessly in case there was a need to get to the concealed idiophone.

As I aligned on my feet after the landing and shook the gravel from the wrecked bricks off my body my gaze instantly got fixed on the contours of a hollow, cup-shaped figure starting to show from the darkened depth of the chamber.

I came nearer and happily received evidence that there it was - the bell I had been scouting for all this time, its broad bronze waist densely covered in dust and web, but not the thick glutinous web the Zephonim weaved, for luckily this place appeared to be not yet discovered by them.

At last my search was complete and now I could contact the hunters and give them the command to ring their bell in unison with mine so we could finally crush those limpid walls that fenced the way to the mechanism.

But still it was too soon to exult over success, for the establishment of mental connection between me and the hunters represented a quite separate issue. Due to my early death at the hands of Kain and my brethren I didn't have the opportunity to become an experienced user of the Whisper ability as a vampire, which is why I still had reservations whether the plan I had so confidently proposed to the hunters would actually work. However, ever since becoming a wraith I could not help but keep on mastering this skill each time I would need to speak to someone, for it was the only way for me to voice words without a tongue and a lower jaw. Besides, the distant telepathic communication I had had with Ariel before she decided to 'boycott' me proved that I was more or less capable of maintaining the state of mind contact, even though I could not always control its entire process. Perhaps after being reborn as a phantom my mental faculties had somehow improved and if I would make a sufficient effort now I would truly manage to reach the vaults of the hunters' conscience and deliver them my message.

Having mustered my strengths I sat on the floor and closed my eyes, concentrating on catching the sensation I remembered to have experienced on previous occasions when I would enter into a telepathic contact with someone. Each time I used the Whisper on another being it always felt like projecting my essence from my body right into my interlocutor's brain and then speaking as if being inside it with both our astral bodies seeming to temporarily become one for this moment. And this very effect I tried to recall and replicate now, tensing my every brain cell to envisage the images of Bolgor, Zolyn and Ansek, making myself believe they were now here with me and able to hear my every whispered word loud and clear had I the opportunity to talk to them in person.

Once I felt my subliminal self finally breaking the barrier of distance and disbelief and then the intangible link leading to the minds of the hunters emerging within my sentience I instantly started vocalizing the message I was looking to deliver them, thoroughly walking through every word of it,

=_Bolgor, Ansek, Zolyn! It's me, Raziel. I have just found the immured bell. Now start tolling the bell you're stationed around, and I shall immediately do the same to this one!_=

Just as usually it felt like hearing my voice spoken aloud, but I knew that this feeling was illusionary, for it was only a projection of my thoughts over a distance, and this time this distance was much, much longer than the one I was accustomed to.

Unfortunately there was no way to tell for sure whether my message was reaching the hunters or not, for none of them was able to give any kind of reply to my signal. Even if they had possessed some extraordinary mental abilities that the members of the human race could cope with as well it still would not have helped them, for the canals within which the Whisper technique was used by the vampires were inaccessible to human minds. Therefore I kept repeating the words of my message over and over again, thus trying to increase the chances that Bolgor and his brothers would sooner or later hear them.

It was until some extraneous presence distracted me, dramatically penetrating into my very core while I was still deep in telepathic communication. This interference caught me at a nonplus, causing me to lose all my concentration at once and temporarily become vulnerable to the rush of echoing voices starting to enclose me from what seemed to be all sides,

=_In the name of Lord Zephon we order you to stop!_=

=_Your intrusion has gone too far, infidel! Surrender or be demolished!=_

The deranging whispering voices kept on gathering their intensity and it was only the recognition of their true source that kept me from completely getting lost in their swirling stream. The sensation was equal to the one I had experienced when I was ambushed by the vampire worshippers during my interrogation of Moldgar and now there was no doubt that it were they who were playing these 'tricks' on me again.

Feeling the rage beginning to boil inside me in response to this cowardly circumvention I huddled together and sharply sprang to my feet, then haggardly screamed into nowhere at the top of my lungs. This was an act of both fury and desperation, but it helped me regain self-control and banish all the voices from my mind, the volume of my shout shattering them within its vaults like drinking glass.

As the sounds eroded from my head I turned to the side of the breach in the wall and at once beheld a group of vampire worshippers already standing all over it with their weapons held in train. Just as I suspected earlier there were other zealots residing here aside from those I had already dispatched, and now I was about to meet another squadron of theirs. Only for this once there was no leader by their side to disable my weapon with any unholy artifacts, so now these pathetic bootlickers had no chance to stand against me.

"You fools have no idea what you've got yourself into." I said tauntingly and flourished at them with the wraith blade in a provoking manner.

The worshippers were not slow to catch my drift and the one in a grey robe that stood ahead of everyone immediately brushed at me with the stave in his hands swung wide. Behind him two other red-robed religionists concurrently jumped to the opposite corners of the chamber, the twinned daggers they carried also held cocked for a throw.

Fathoming that they were looking to attack me from a distance while I was busy repelling their partner's thrust I leapt high into the air instead, vaulting over the grey-robed warrior and then diving at the rest of the group that remained standing in the entrance.

The masked mortals in the rear clearly did not expect such a move and tarried a second before wriggling out of my way, which was enough for me to graze several of them with the blade. The Reaver slit one worshipper all the way through his torso, instantly disrupting his feeble flesh in twain and absorbing the released soul, and caught another one by the shoulder, almost hewing off the whole arm.

The chamber filled with screams of pain and terror as I quickly flung through the now vacant breach in the wall back into the corridor. Behind me I heard several daggers that must have been cast after me hitting the bricked fundament with a loud metal clang.

I rose to my feet and saw another worshipper in a grey robe with a stave still standing in the corridor not far from where I landed.

After a moment of visible dither he lunged forth, vertically bringing down his weapon on me as if it was a sledgehammer.

I sidestepped, grabbing the zealot by the back of his neck as he lumbered past, then boisterously tossed him to the side of the gap in the wall like some pariah dog. The force of the momentum snapped the warrior's neck right in mid-air, his broken carcass knocking off two other worshippers that had just walked out of the chamber in pursuit of me.

Without lingering a second I took another high jump then dropped on the pig-pile of mortals in an attempt to crush them all at once with one hammering blow of the Reaver.

One zealot managed to roll away from my assault, but the other two hopelessly got their husks scattered to bloody froth. The wraith blade shrilled like mad from such intense engorgement of souls, its glaring blue corpus turning into a whole wildfire of energy.

Meanwhile the masked human that had just eluded my stroke attempted to recapture the initiative and flashed up toward me like an arrow with his dagger aimed at my heart. But despite his amplified vampire-like speed I was still able to foresee his move and easily caught him by the arm before the blade's point reached my flesh.

The mortal yelped mournfully the moment he realized that the attack he had put so much effort into turned out to be fruitless, but I quickly absolved him from the unpleasant feeling of failure by impaling him with the Reaver.

The power of the surfeit phantom sword blew his body to pieces, all the bones, entrails and bloodied fragments of flesh hurling asunder in a gory explosion with only the torn-off stump of the worshipper's arm almost comically remaining gripped in my left hand.

I dropped the avulsed limb on the floor with some sinister amusement over the jocularity of the spectacle and then stepped back into the chamber. The red-robed zealot whom I had wounded at the outset was lying on the floor in great pain from his injury, his heavily bleeding arm seeming to barely keep from completely tearing off his shoulder. By his side was standing the grey-robed warrior that had started the brawl, his whole figure now cowardly trembling at the sight of me approaching them.

As I continued to pace further in their direction the one in a grey robe started nervously backtracking with his stave held in defense until his body clumsily pitched upon the bell that happened to stand right behind him.

"You were so eager to fight just moments ago." I jeered at him. "What happened to all your bravado?"

The masked mortal diddled a bit at this phrase, then abruptly jumped on the top of the bell abaft of him and propelled from it high upwards as if trying to vault over me the way I did over him previously.

With strong intent of not letting the worshipper escape at any cost I leapt into the air after him and swung the wraith blade bottom-up, slicing his carcass in half from the crotch all the way to the neck. Once more the Soul Reaver shrieked in testimony of edacious satisfaction as the corporeal vessel of the warrior it had ruptured burst into burning pieces that swept all over the chamber.

When all the potential attackers were defeated and the rampant atmosphere of the place began to subside I turned my gaze to the injured mortal that was still huddling up on the ground with his shoulder profusely streaming blood on the concrete.

As I started coming nearer to him the worshipper cast at me a nearly sheepish glance through the eyelets in his mask as if still hoping I would show him some mercy. But with my every following step his eyes kept on growing more and more horrified as he seemed to gradually deduce from my decisive gait that he was not going to get any from me.

Once there was one last foot left between me and him I ruthlessly aimed the sword for the finishing blow when suddenly a remote ringing noise came from afar and distracted me.

I stopped short and pricked up my ears as the resonating sound continued to boom with intervals, growing more and more intense with each chime.

After a few seconds of some suspicious stupor I perceived that the sound I was hearing was the one produced by a repetitively tolled bell. In all likelihood the telepathic message I had been trying so hard to deliver to the hunters appeared to have reached them after all and now it was my turn to follow their example and ring the bell that stood in the proximity of mine.

Being aware that the time was not to be wasted I left the defenseless worshipper before me to himself and instead made a move toward the sound-making device. Then I balled my left hand into a fist and slashed the bell's waist with great force, causing it to start ringing as well.

The wave of vibration immediately spread throughout the whole place, the loudness of the increasing noise forcing me to cover my ears with whatever I had since my right palm was inextricably holding the Reaver blade.

When the tuning of the two bells collided the resonance was created and everything around started quaking with preposterous oscillation.

For an instant the penetrating vibration felt so hard I thought it was about to crush not only the glass-like walls of the mechanism's chamber, but also the entire basement of the cathedral. But after a while the ear-jarring whistle of the resonance finally began to abate, safely leaving the bricked fundament and everything else around me untouched.

Once I was able again to tolerate the reverberations left in the air I straightened up and turned to the side of the recess in the wall, intent upon exiting the chamber and going check whether this whole scheme the hunters and I had funneled our energies into had anyhow affected the translucent walls that blocked the path to the mechanism.

But before I even made the first step a drastic breezing sound came from behind and I sensed a windy rush of air roll into my skin that even made the tattered wings on my back flap as if being aloof.

I wheeled around and barely glimpsed an eluding shimmer of a movement that looked like a shadow slipping away round the corner. By this moment the zealot I had left on the floor was already nowhere to be seen, having left only a greasy puddle of his own blood where he was lying just a while ago.

I took a squint at this spot and saw a long crimson line stretching from the puddle all the way toward the breach in the wall. This sight gave me an enjoyable feeling of déjà-vu, for it made me recall the similar situation when one of the worshippers that assassinated the vampire hunter named Moldgar that I was trying to interrogate as to the location of the mechanism failed to make a clean getaway after that by leaving a trail of blood for me to follow. Only this time it was not the blood of the worshipper's victim negligibly dripping from his weapon, but the blood spilling from his own body to guide me, so the search was going to be even easier than before.

In pursuit of the escaped vampire religionist I quickly leapt out of the chamber and saw that the trace of blood left by him on the floor was leading toward the corridor from where I had got here. Though I expected him to run in the direction of the mechanism he must have chosen to either retreat to his lair or report danger to his fellow worshippers if there were still some of them left alive in this edifice.

In any case Bolgor and his brethren could get into serious troubles if their location would be descried by the human zealots or the vampires, so I had to delay the check of the mechanism's chamber and instead return to them, for they alone could know how to operate the device if its location was accessible by now.

With this object in mind I shifted to the spectral realm, disengaging myself from the rim of time so I could reach the hunters before any of my adversaries would be able to.

* * *

Since I had already fractured the encrypted door that used to block my path to the other part of this tier now there were no more substantial obstacles to impede my progress on the way to the first bell. Moreover, no tiresome sluagh or vampire wraiths would fall into my route as well, so I did not have to bother with any useless combats even for the purpose of feeding – the Reaver had swallowed enough souls of the worshippers during the last battle with them and for now had reduced the burning feeling of hunger within me to a petty background hum.

The trek through the wobbling corridors which I was crossing for the third time already lasted a while, and as I carried on something else began to put me on my guard. The closer I kept coming to the intended location, the more wandering spirits were getting in my way, which was strange, for when I traveled through this area after the brawl with the revived Zephonim there were scarcely any living essences to be found in these passages. It was almost as if dozens of beings had just died here not long ago, but what beings those were could only be found out on the material plane.

As I at last reached the chamber with the bell I was pleased to discover that at least the planar portal that I had previously found inside it was still on its place.

Making no delay I transferred myself through it into the material dimension and manifested in the very middle of the hunters' outpost.

Once reality came into own again the first thing I was able to view were the bodies of all three hunters lying flat on the ground in different corners of the chamber together with the bodies of several bloodied and mangled Zephonim ghouls interspersing with them.

A shiver ran down my spine when I was about to think that the hunters were dead just like these arachnids, but then I saw Bolgor who was lying closest to me making a faint move of his head in my direction. He seemed to be severely knocked up, but once he recognized me his eyes widened vividly and he jolted with his whole figure.

"Raziel!" he cried out, his voice making his brothers Zolyn and Ansek who also looked to be barely conscious briskly turn their gazes to me. "But how did you…?"

"We shall discuss it later." I cut him off, eluding all the superfluous questions and unnecessary explanations. "What happened here?"

Before the leader of the hunters' squadron was able to answer something I came nigh to him and gave him my hand, repeating the gesture he made when I was down after fighting the living dead Zephonim.

He pulled himself up with my help and then started speaking, his breath still hoarse from exhaustion, "We'd been attacked by the vampires shortly before the moment you contacted us with your telepathic echo... There were dozens of them, all persistently coming after us as if they foreknew we would be stationed in this area… just as you had warned us earlier."

"They might have well foreknown this." I said. "But even if they hadn't, they could have simply detected your presence here – they're vampires after all." Then I cast another glance at the mutilated corpses of the Zephonim on the floor and remarked, "Although it appears that their onslaught didn't succeed in breaching your defense at the long last."

Bolgor grinned at this phrase in his typical manner.

"We'd love to make a merit of this, but the truth is that we simply had luck." he confessed. "When you gave us the command to ring our bell we all thought it was going to be the final thing for us to do on this side of the grave, for no way could we stand up against such a horde of ghouls. But once we sounded it, it turned out that these wretches could not bear its noise, which gave us an ultimate advantage over them."

As Bolgor enlightened me in regard to this I instantly paid attention to the distinctive patches of caked blood around the noses, eyes and ear-holes of the dead arachnids, which could only mean that these beasts had been exposed to a lethal wave of ringing sound. Now it was clear how the hunters were able to defeat so many bloodsuckers at once and why there was such an unlikely gathering of souls in the corridors in the spectral realm.

"The main thing is that we managed to do what we planned to." I told Bolgor. "The bells were rung synchronically and I think we were successful in producing the right effect on those translucent walls around the mechanism. Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to make sure of that, for I too got involved in an unscheduled confrontation. But I guess that we'll have no problem checking that once we are all there."

Bolgor said nothing in return, but I suddenly noticed a blink of uncertainty in his gaze that I had not yet seen before.

"Will you be able to walk there?" I asked him sceptically, suspecting that perhaps the reason for his diffidence was the prostrated condition of his brethren and himself. These humans had spent several days in this hell-pit of a place constantly fighting hungry ferocious monsters without any food, water and rest, so as much as I would have loved to blame everything on their anthropic frailty they really deserved some lenience now.

"Personally me – yes," he replied flatly and then turned his head to one of his fellow crossbowmen lying on the ground a couple of feet behind him. "But I'm afraid I can't say the same for Ansek – he's wounded badly…"

With these words he hobbled toward his brother and then leaned over him as if trying to examine his trauma in a closer look, while I too approached them to get at least a partial view of what was the problem. From what I was able to see Ansek was injured in the area of his thigh just like Moldgar when I found him in the corridor being lugged away by the Zephonim. Only in case of Ansek there were no such profuse exsanguinations, but nevertheless it was visible that his wound was pretty deep and most likely rendered him incapable of walking.

At some point Ansek attempted to sit up with effort, but eventually only barely managed to lift his helmeted head to address himself to his leader.

"Leave me, commander…" he spoke to Bolgor in a croaking voice. "I don't want to become a burden on your shoulders… My life is insignificant… It is only the great aim that matters…"

"Don't say so, Ansek!" his leader told him with a mandatory, but at the same time advertent intonation. "We will never leave you! You are our brother, our flesh and blood, and we won't proceed without you!"

The second arbalester Zolyn who had also been lying nearly motionless during most of the recent time had sharply forced himself into standing after this dialogue between his partners and came up to his wounded sibling as well. Only now I found myself realizing that until this moment I didn't even distinguish which one of these two warriors was Ansek and which one was Zolyn, since they both looked like two completely identical twins in their black full platemail garments. And now it appeared that if it hadn't been for Ansek's wounding I would have never figured that out myself.

"Worry not, brother, we'll find a way to carry you away from here." he said and grabbed his black-armored comrade by the armpit in an attempt to raise him from the ground.

Bolgor hastened to do the same from the other side but I stopped him by holding him back by the shoulder.

"I think I can handle this with much less difficulty." I alleged when he stared at me in surprise.

Then I stepped past him toward Ansek and effortlessly lifted the injured hunter by the waist over my left shoulder. Though the warrior was head and shoulders taller than me and obviously weighted more that I did with my surpassing strength lifting him or any other ordinary human or vampire felt easier than picking up a baby.

"I shall be the one to carry him." I told Bolgor and Zolyn in an orderly tone. "Me doing this will spare us a lot of time. And, besides, you two are frazzled enough already."

The hunters exchanged glances, but none of them made any reply, the expression on Bolgor's face though displaying what seemed to be an unspoken consent. When it became clear that no objections were going to be raised I took the word again, "Brace yourselves, for we have almost achieved our objective. This is the final stage of our quest here and now we all have to make the last effort."

The two mortals again said nothing in return, but this time both nodded their approval in response to my call. I thought that this display of agreement would be inevitably followed by another resigned inclination, but much to my surprise and pleasure it wouldn't. Evidently only such grievous ergasthenia that they were experiencing now could have managed to wean these men of their tiresome ceremoniousness.

After several seconds of silent inactivity I made for the breach in the wall that led to the corridor, the body of Ansek continuing to hang loose over my shoulder.

Before exiting the chamber I turned my head and saw Zolyn picking up his brother's dropped crossbow and then beginning to pace right after me even without waiting for his commander to step before him the way it had always been done before. It was curious and at the same time sad to watch how the state of extreme wariness and desperation was forcing these humans to almost completely forget about their usual manners and habits and simply carry themselves on wing and prayer without their former pride and stateliness. I only hoped this did not relate to their combat skills, for all the devastating skirmishes they had already been through could turn out to be nothing more than a prelude to what was still awaiting me and them ahead…


	9. Chapter 9: War of Siege

**War of Siege**

To say that one and the same route from the fourth tier to the third one and back had long since got me browned off with was to say nothing. This was the fourth time in a row I had to walk it and for this once I could not even do that at my preferred pace, for there was the cohort of vampire hunters accompanying me that were all barely trailing behind and thus greatly hampering my progress. I was trying hard not to display my irritation by this because I knew they were holding their own as best as they could after all the excruciation they had endured in this pandemonium. And, furthermore, it was they who could have had any notion of how to operate the mechanism that started up the organs, so for now their role in this journey was just as important as mine, if not more important.

However, about halfway to our destination point the mortals discovered to me that there was another hidden tunnel on this path leading to the third level that I did not yet know about, which managed to diversify our monotonous travel a bit. At first I grew wary why they had not told me that earlier but then I realized that the location was too specific to be searched out without precise knowledge of its whereabouts.

So we entered the tunnel that according to Bolgor's words 'was a short cut to the lower tier and could help us avoid excessive collisions with our foes', which so far had not yet got in our way even once. But this circumstance was rather disturbing than soothing me, for it seemed more likely that our enemies were only milking the moment of their attack by preparing another trap for us. No way could that worshipper that had escaped from me have failed to alert his brethren or his vampire masters about our activities here, so the seeming absence of danger now for sure had to be just another breath before the plunge.

The wounded hunter Ansek that I was carrying all the way on my shoulder had not attempted to speak a word ever since we departed the chamber. Once or twice his silence made me drop a hint of doubt if he was still alive, but from time to time the injured warrior kept on showing some signs of life by making subtle moans and grunts of pain. His injury was not fatal, but it still needed bandaging urgently, otherwise there was a risk of getting it infected. Unfortunately there was no proper piece of cloth at hand to use as a tourniquet and even though the bleeding from the wound was relatively slack as long as it remained open the warrior's condition would worsen evermore.

Eventually the tunnel reached its end and brought us to the unencrypted area of the cathedral. I had to admit that the use of this passage had truly succeeded in accelerating our pace, for even despite the hunters' poor travel speed I still had a very distinct feeling that we had reached the right tier much sooner than it would have taken us via ordinary itinerary.

As we walked into the corridor I at once recognized its entourage by the indicative trail of caked blood stretching all the way across the floor. This was the very trace left by the maimed worshipper that had stolen away from me earlier before, which meant that the immured passage had taken us to the one and only part of the edifice we needed.

Gladdened by this realization I turned my head to Bolgor and Zolyn toddling abaft of me and declared to them, "We're nearly there!"

Again none of the jaded hunters made any reply to my statement and both simply continued to mutely wobble their way out of the passage without even turning their gazes to me. Such irreverent behavior on their part was already beginning to anger me, but I couldn't really blame them for that, since they both looked to be barely refraining from ultimately flaking out with fatigue. So instead of showing my resentment I merely proceeded to walk up the path to the intended location, letting the two dehematized mortals move along in the way and manner that was convenient for them.

At some time we reached the part of the corridor where I had earlier found the trapped and wounded vampire hunter Moldgar, who, as it emerged later, happened to be the member of the same squadron Bolgor was in command of. The fatally injured mortal whom I at first saved from becoming a meal for the Zephonim was then murdered by a couple of vampire worshippers that cunningly sidetracked me during my interrogation of him and used my distraction to assassinate the warrior when he was about to disclose to me the information as to the location of the mechanism. But now on the spot where his corpse used to lie were left only the lustrous shreds of the webbing hasp I had disentangled him from, without which I probably would not have even recognized this particular area.

Though I was glad that the hunters accompanying me would not have to find their brother's dead body here now this circumstance also gave me some reasons to grow even more circumspect. Of course, I had expected from the outset that the arachnid ghouls would not be fastidious to act like scavengers and would still feast on the blood from the man's soulless dead body once they discovered it, but I did not expect that they would discover it here so soon. This confirmed my concerns that our adversaries had already inspected this place after I had left it pursuing the human zealots and now they could be easily lying in wait for us at the end of this trek.

In a few minutes we finally got to the hall-like area of the tier from where my exploration of this part of the edifice had initially begun. As soon as I stepped out of the passage leading there my eyes met slabs of shattered fragments of glass-like material lying all over the two-sided uplifting floor. The sight of the hall was now a chaotic mess, but it pleased my vision to see it in such a state, for it was the irresistible proof that our unlikely venture with the ringing of the bells had actually worked and now they way to the mechanism that activated the cathedral's pipes was free at last.

"The walls are down!" I shouted to Bolgor and Zolyn who were hobbling about twenty feet behind me and could not yet view this with their own eyes. "The chamber with the mechanism can now be entered!"

After my announcement the two hunters vividly lifted their heads in utter surprise and then even managed to hasten their steps as if suddenly having found inside themselves the reserves of strength they didn't know they had. Once they walked into the hall as well they marveled at the scenery before their eyes with expressions of genuine wonder.

"My goodness!" exclaimed Bolgor. "I cannot believe my eyes! It worked!"

Clearly the humans didn't even expect that practically anything could come out of this long and sophisticated scheme we had developed together, but now that they beheld the translucent walls that used to block the path to the mechanism torn down to shatters it seemed to have imbued them with the first seeds of hope that all the efforts and strivings they had put into this lingering, painful journey would not be in vain. Even barely conscious Ansek that had been hanging languidly over my shoulder during this entire trip slowly began to wake out of his pass-out in response to our glad cries and gradually perceive what was going on around him.

We started making our way up the rising track toward the doorway that led into the chamber with the mechanism, the glass-like flakes of the broken walls crisping under our feet with every step. Surprisingly enough there were no Zephonim or vampire religionists lying here in ambush for us as I suspected earlier. Perhaps the vast observable area of this hall might not have been the fittest place to lurk in, which gave me a nudge that the trap could simply be awaiting us in the very chamber where the mechanism was located if our enemies had already found it.

With this idea born in my mind I cautiously made the last paces to the entrance then carefully laid Ansek's body on the ground nearby and faced the wooden door, looking to open it.

When Zolyn and Bolgor approached me from behind I turned my glance to them and said, "Stay on your watch! This might be a set-up!"

Upon my order Bolgor quickly took the sword out of his scabbard while Zolyn who until this point had been carrying both his own and his brother's crossbows attached one weapon to his belt and held the other one in position to fire. I too raised the Soul Reaver in train for a blow and then mightily kicked the door off its hinges with my foot, already prepared to momentarily spring into fight if necessary.

But fortunately it turned out that there was no danger awaiting us here as well and the chamber appeared to be empty with only the gear-work and maintenance of the mechanism itself occupying its space.

When it became clear that there was nothing hazardous to anticipate about this place I relaxed my posture and let the hunters step in the room after me. Zolyn and Bolgor put their weapons aside and then brought Ansek into the chamber, carrying together his flabby body by arms and legs before laying it on the floor with his back pitched against the wall. After that the two hunters remained standing by their injured comrade for some more time as I went on examining the mechanism's exterior view.

It was a colossal system of various pipes, pinions, wires, gears and levers, looking together like an inside of some gigantic clockwork. Albeit I was not thoroughly competent in matters of technology, so far it was the most complicated and inconceivable piece of machinery I had ever seen in my entire existence. Once again it made me get astonished at the tremendous progress humanity had achieved in their development, for I could not recall anything of such complexity and profoundness to have ever been created by the vampire race. With such an elaborate operating system now there was no shade of doubt left in my mind that the whole idea of the cathedral being capable of spreading the deadly hymn through its pipes across the whole Nosgoth territory was obviously no idle threat.

At some point Bolgor stood by my side and started regarding the mechanism as well, his glance though looking a bit puzzled.

"Do you know how to make this thing work?" I asked him after some pause.

"In general terms." he replied tonelessly then came nigh to the machinery and started gently trying some levers. "Do not forget that it has never been set in motion before."

I gathered my brows together, then asked the human in a more persistent tone, "So can you start up the mechanism or not?"

"I believe I can." Bolgor answered without looking back at me, still busy pulling the levers. "But it is going to take some time."

"Which we don't have plenty of right now." I remarked sardonically.

Bolgor finally turned his head to me with a grim look on his face then spoke through gritted teeth, "I'll try to do everything as fast as feasible."

Sensing his negative fluids I said nothing in return and simply let him carry on his work. For now there was nothing for me to contribute to this process, so all that remained was to arm myself with patience and wait for the outcome. With this comprehension I backed myself in the corner of the room and sat on the floor, continuing to watch Bolgor messing about with the gear-work and from time to time making some of its parts groan and gnash. To the right of me Zolyn kept leaning over Ansek, probably still trying to bring him to senses. He sure did understand that what his wounded brother truly needed now was a real healing and not some weak attempts to console him, but since there was no such option available at the moment it was presumably better than nothing.

As time began to slowly drag on I stopped trying to follow what was going on around me and eased my concentration for a while. I pondered into my own thoughts, letting them wander randomly and absorb me with the unpredictable course of their flight. At first I began to think about Zephon and how I would reach his lair if Bolgor would not manage to activate the mechanism. Then I endeavored to imagine what kind of monstrosity my brother could have turned into as a result of the desecrating influence of corruption, building my views on the appearance of his arthropod-like offspring. Then I thought about Kain and what could be going through his mind now as he was awaiting me in his retreat in the northern mountains. This thought in its turn made me remember about the Elder God who was the one to have informed me of Kain's current location in the first place and after recalling it I started wondering if my omnipresent protector was having fun now watching me become deadlocked throughout my quest over and over again.

Before my stream of consciousness could bring me to any further meditations I suddenly heard some new rattling sound beginning to dilute the rumbling noise of the mechanism that filled the chamber's space.

I stiffened and gruffly bolted to my feet, continuing to listen out for the sound as Zolyn dazedly twisted his helmeted head to me in response to my abrupt movement.

"What happened?" he asked me, his question making Bolgor redirect his attention to me as well.

"Can your hear it?" I asked them both back, feeling the clattering noise becoming louder and drawing closer.

The mortals exchanged inapprehensive glances, but still providently made a reach for their weapons. Certainly it was pointless to ask them if they could detect such subtle sound, since human hearing was far beneath the one a former vampire like me could have.

But in a matter of seconds the noise became so intense that the hunters were able to hear it too.

Bolgor and Zolyn started frantically whirling back and forth in an attempt to track down the source of the rustle, while I shifted my gaze to the side of the doorway and at once caught sight of several shuffling stick-like limbs already beginning to show out of it.

Before any of the warriors even managed to react to the incoming peril I launched myself toward the entrance with one quick bound and swung the wraith blade in a virulent arc.

The flaming edge of the sword met an eerie pale-grey head of a fledgling Zephonim on its way, which it instantly blew to pieces. The beheaded skeletal frame flaccidly thudded down with the liberated vampire soul flying out of its neck and feeding the Reaver, making the energy spire around it glare brighter and snake faster.

But even then the clacking sound didn't cease and I anxiously stamped out of the chamber to see what was happening outside of it.

Just as I peered out of the doorframe I beheld the whole track of the platform I stepped upon rapidly becoming swarmed by an entire horde of the Zephonim ghouls, their heavily gathering flows looking from afar like those that were hounding me on the ground-tier earlier before. The spider-like beasts were coming out of everywhere, some of them even scaling their way from both ends of the vertical tunnel formed by the cathedral's organs.

So this was the very trap I had been apprehending all along, but didn't know where exactly to look for: the vampires had purposely let us get into the chamber unhindered and now that we were all gathered inside it were planning to corner us here all at once, leaving us with no way to run and no place to retreat to.

"Watch out! This is an ambush!" I bawled out to the hunters without taking my eyes off the host of arachnids drawing near from all sides of the uplifting track.

In response to my call the leader of the hunters' squadron at once abandoned the mechanism he had been working on and promptly dashed to the doorway, looking to join me in the upcoming skirmish, but I strongly blocked his way with the Reaver's blade.

"No, Bolgor!" I stopped him as he nearly ran into the sword's burning corpus. "I'll deter the onslaught by myself! You must go on trying to start up the mechanism! This is the only way your brethren can be rescued!"

The scarlet-armored human continued standing before me for several more seconds, his whole face frowning and eyes shifting with hesitation, but in the end he must have decided to yield the voice of reason and returned to the machinery.

Once he did so, Zolyn attempted to take up his place in assisting me outside the chamber, but I came up with a different instruction for him as well.

"Stay here and cover the entrance!" I ordered the crossbowman, hurriedly barking out the words as the very last feet remained between me and the impending swarm of the Zephonim. "Don't let any vampire get to the mechanism!"

The moment I finished this sentence one of the Zephonim, approaching from afore, lunged at me with its sharp-toothed jaws aimed at my left shoulder. I sidestepped and slashed the arachnid across its spine with the wraith blade, dissecting it in two.

Before the stumps of the ghoul's chopped carcass could even hit the ground three more vampires emerged on its former place and started vehemently advancing on me. Behind them could be seen hundreds other beings of their kind densely crowding the platform after these three, all hissing and clicking with their scraggy insect-like limbs.

"Perhaps breaking off the door to the chamber was not the wisest move to make." I thought as I began to backtrack toward it from the verging horde, trying to shield the way to the room as much as I could.

I knew the mechanism had to be protected at all costs, even if it would mean exterminating the entire Zephonim clan in this fight… so much like my own clan was exterminated by Kain…

* * *

But what was happening for the next ten or fifteen minutes could not really be called a fight, for every fight, even a simple or inessential one had to require at least a measure of some strategic thinking and use of skills. Instead it could only be called a massacre - a thoughtless, brutal, inordinate massacre with blood uninterruptedly pooling over the platform and pieces of scattered limbs, bones and intestines flying every which way.

The Soul Reaver in my hands was getting overfed with infinite stream of breaking loose souls, the loudness of its insane screams of engorgement yielding only to the one of the dying screams of the arachnid ghouls it was dispatching as I kept randomly hacking and tearing with it at everything that moved around me, sometimes successfully slicing several monsters at the same time with one swipe of the sword. Curiously enough it turned out to be easier to battle the Zephonim when they were gathering in such colossal crowds rather than small packs, since there was no room left for them to make use of their agility and dodge my shots.

But even with this kind of advantage their violent onset was still wearing me down bit by bit, forcing me deeper and deeper into the chamber I was do desperate to protect from intrusion.

When I was already standing with one foot inside the room a long metal bolt swished the air an inch away from my right hip and pierced all the way through two Zephonim in front of me at a time, impaling them together like peaces of meat on a skewer.

Without reverting eyes I realized that Zolyn had just followed my order and joined me in defending the entrance now that the vampires got too close to the mechanism.

In the same second Bolgor's voice rang out from behind, its usually confident tone trembling with audible nervousness, "Hang on! Everything will be running soon!"

Although it was supposed to be good news to hear, the fact that the mechanism was still not yet set in motion had only vexed me more and after inquiring about it I destroyed the next several Zephonim to get in my way with almost berserk-like savagery.

But giving way to rampage had its drawbacks too, for it could often be the first step to getting reckless, which proved to be true in my case as well when in the full swing of this butchery I negligently missed one of the vampires catching me across my chest with its cloven limb.

I staggered back from the blow with the Reaver's manifestation retreating inside my frame as the barging-through host of the arachnid beasts finally managed to tear a hole in my defense and began to invade the room.

Zolyn immediately shot down one of the intruding ghouls into the head, but several more were still able to creep into the chamber.

Thereafter one of the penetrated beasts instantly made a threatening move to the mechanism, but I quickly stopped it by jumping it and slashing its fanged muzzle with my talons.

As the Zephonim recoiled from my attack I turned around and saw the other arachnids that had broken into the room starting to simultaneously impend on me as well, ignoring wounded defenseless Ansek lying couched against the wall in the distant part of the chamber and Zolyn that was still busy hectically loading a new bolt into his crossbow. There seemed that the ghouls had only the destruction of the mechanism on their mind at the moment and were now intending to assault me only for the sake of cleaning the way to their primary target.

To the right of me Bolgor was still not done with the activation of the device, nervously pulling one lever after another and from time to time worriedly looking out at the slaughterhouse taking place a couple of feet away from him. I understood that by all manner of means I had to win some more time for him to finish his work, so without a secondary delay I lashed at the approaching bloodsuckers headfirst, using my talons as the only weapon to remain at my disposal.

With the power of the wraith blade already lost I no longer had to care about not getting injured, so once I got into the very gathering of my enemies I started bestially flourishing at them with my claws left and right, heedless of the numerous shots delivered by them to me. Of course, absorbing too much damage would not be the most preferable progression of events, but as long as I could keep the Zephonim's attention focused on me instead of the mechanism it was still the lesser of two evils.

In the other corner of the chamber Zolyn continued providing me with fire support, but each time he would shoot dead one vampire several new would immediately replace it while the arbalester had to take precious seconds on loading new arrows into his crossbow before killing the next foes.

Slowly more and more arachnids began to infiltrate the internal space of the room and it became evident that no matter how hard we all tried we would not be able to curb that many of them for much longer. I strove to keep every single Zephonim in view in order to be able to promptly react if one of them would try to get its hands on the mechanism, but to do this was getting harder and harder as the ghouls that I was ceaselessly battling suddenly started to enclose me in a tight circle.

I began to stray from their sprawl with everything I had but soon they still managed to surge all over my body like some vermin insects, ravenously clawing and biting at my flesh as I struggled to get them off me. Such relentless attack was literally nibbling the soul energy that held the matter of my body together, and in a couple of seconds I already felt my spiritual essence to be about to slip away from the grasp of the material plane.

But in the very instant the world of the dead almost greeted me again a sound of flesh and bones carved by steel was abruptly heard inches away from my head as several arthropod carcasses that were biting into me at once released the hold of my figure and limped down with mournful shrieks. The same repeated several more times until there were so few predators left on my body I was able to shake them off me by myself.

Once I finally got unbound I saw Bolgor standing in front of me in a triumphant posture with the claymore in his hands thickly dripping blood on the floor. Before I even managed to say something he bolted past me and finished off the two Zephonim in the rear I had just thrown off me.

On the morrow of this the leader of the hunters' squadron turned his face to me again, the expression on it resembling a mixture of elation and impetuosity. Bolgor's unique ability to come to my aid exactly in the very second I was needing it most seemed to have already become a habit of his and when I arrived at this idea it made me chuckle at the back of my mind.

"Raziel, I have managed to launch the mechanism!" he informed me with strutting excitement in his voice. "The air-vents at the bottom of the organs are now activated!"

After hearing this I glanced at the mechanism's outfit, seeing how most of its details were now automatically running and rotating with a distinctive loud groan of metal against metal.

"Excellent!" I praised him for his success and then looked behind me at a new pack of the Zephonim invading the chamber. "Can you cover me now for short while?"

"With great pleasure." the hunter replied sneeringly and instantly darted at the assailing vampires with nearly animalistic vigor.

Thereupon I quickly turned down my shoulder-cape and imbibed all the souls left by those ghouls that Bolgor had just dismantled. There were about five or six essences to get drawn into my gaping maw, which was more than enough to restore all my expended energy and return the Reaver's projection to me.

Once I retrieved my symbiotic weapon I rushed forth toward the scuffle ensuing between Bolgor and the breaking-through arachnids and joined the human warrior in his desperate opposition. Together we finally began to force the horde of spider-like monsters out of the room, behind us Zolyn still assiduously supporting our encroachment with his well-aimed crossbow shots.

After several minutes of constrained confrontation we managed to recapture the initiative and drive our foes back to the platform they were coming from. As we made our way there I noticed that the streams of the incoming Zephonim were no longer as dense as before and their numbers had visibly decreased in comparison with the beginning of their invasion. But nevertheless there were still rather many of them continuing to impend and with Ansek being out of action I had grave doubts whether Bolgor and Zolyn would manage to handle them all on their own if I would now embark to the topmost tier of the cathedral.

"Will you be able to withstand their siege without me?" I asked Bolgor who was violently combating a couple of ghouls almost back-to-back with me.

"Sure we will!" he answered all but jestingly, even though visibly straining with every blow he administered to his adversaries. "After all that terrible tinkering I have had with the activation of the mechanism this feels like a child's play now!"

For some reason the leader of the hunters' squadron seemed to be taking a rose-colored view of the situation, but I was not yet ready to share his optimism and once we rebuffed another stream of feral vampires and gained time to fetch wind before the new pack would reach us I spoke to him again in a more persuasive manner,

"Seriously, Bolgor," I said. "The vampires keep coming, and if I leave now there will be only two of you against nearly an entire clan of theirs!"

The mortal took a deep breath and then turned his face to me, putting on some genuine graveness.

"You may be right." he returned with utmost solemnity. "But it doesn't matter now. You _have_ to leave us and ascend the apex of the cathedral, for there will be no other chance like this one! The lives of our brethren depend on you and you only!"

Bolgor's tirade made me turn my gaze away in contemplation as he proceeded, "Do not give me wrong, Raziel – I'm honored and pleased to hear that you want to stand by us to the bitter end. But you're a being that is gifted with the power of a God, and you have to use it for the greater good. By staying with us now you might condemn not only our siblings', but the whole world's last chance for survival. But if you do the right thing, there still might be hope both for them and for Nosgoth."

As much as I hated to admit it the warrior was right almost about everything. Even though I was still under an obligation to all these hunters and more than anything else in the world wished to repay them for everything they had done for me by saving their lives, I knew I could not put my emotions before my ultimate task when there was so much at stake. These humans certainly knew from the outset that once they crossed the threshold of this edifice they could never come back again, but they still made that choice and now it was time for me to do the same.

I had to do the right thing.

"Bolgor," I referred to the hunter after a short moment of reflection. "I don't know if this is our last meeting or not, but before I leave I want to thank you and your brothers for all the help and support you rendered me. It was an honor to battle alongside such noble and worthy warriors as you are."

"The honor was ours, Raziel." Bolgor replied respectfully and thumped himself across the chest with the left fist in his traditional gesture of deference.

Normally I would have found such displays of ceremoniousness irritating, but for this once the gesture felt more than appropriate and I even decided to return it by offering the mortal my hand. Bolgor was visibly surprised by such action on my part, for it probably was the least thing he could have expected from me, but after a second of hesitation he proudly clasped my palm and shook it with renewed enthusiasm. Through his eyes I could see that the sensation of a tactile contact with a tridactyl clawed hand of a former vampire seemed very unusual to him.

After shaking my hand the hunter jerkily whirled his head back, sighting the next pack of the Zephonim drawing nearer from the left side of the track we stood on.

"You must leave now, Raziel!" he anxiously told me, again grabbing the hilt of his claymore with both hands. "Quickly, I'm not sure for how much longer the power of the airflow will suffice!"

I nodded to him silently then squinted behind me as well, spotting another group of arachnids also advancing from the right. Stirred by this sight I slovenly scratched at my flesh with the left-hand talons, freeing my right arm from the Reaver's projection, then grabbed the rags of my wings and hastily approached the verge of the platform.

As soon as I stepped on the track's brink I could already feel the intensity of the air current streaming from the bottom of the vertical tunnel as it winnowed the hair on my head. The power of this updraft was far greater than the one of the weak vapor I had used formerly to elevate on this tier, so now there was no doubt left in my mind that it could provide more than enough lift to carry me up to the pinnacle of the cathedral.

Before taking a leap off the platform I took the last gander at Bolgor and said, "Good luck to all of you!"

"Don't worry about us – we'll be fine!" he returned fervently. "For now you should have more important things to be concerned with!"

After saying this, the human harshly swung his sword to the right, decapitating the Zephonim that had just stolen up to him as we spoke. The headless vampire went down, but in the following second the other members of its pack already started striking after their dead mate. But Bolgor was not intimidated by their rush at all and fearlessly threw himself at them with a loud war-cry.

Before the leader of the hunters' squadron and the arthropod ghasts clashed into each other I caught myself realizing I had to stop watching and finally make my initial move, otherwise I probably wouldn't be able to resist the desire to drop everything and come to Bolgor's aid instead.

Grasping this thought I took my eyes away from this scene and turned them back to the barely discernable air-motions swimming in front of me. Then I flexed my knees and desperately jumped off the platform into the vast space lying ahead.

The airflow instantly caught my bulk and swelled the membrane of my ruined wings, momentarily lifting me high upwards. The elevation was so rapid that it almost scared me with its abruptness and for an instant I even felt something close to vertigo.

In less than a second I was already so high I could no longer see the space of the tier I had left beneath me and from then onward there were only the walls of the tunnel and the colossal brass lines of the cathedral's pipes concealed in their fundament surrounding my body throughout my flight.

Slowly I was beginning to get used to such fast gliding and with every passing foot the sensations of space around me were getting replaced with the sensations of approximation to my brother Zephon. He was there, I knew it, waiting for me in his lair on the topmost level of the edifice and I knew he too was able to sense me coming, for the blood connection between all the members of our dynasty still lived even after the death and rebirth of me. It was a long journey I had to struggle through to reach my second sibling, but I had endured it and now another family reunion lay in my prospect.

"I'm coming after you, brother," I was saying inwardly, knowing that Zephon would be able to hear my thoughts over this distance. "I'm coming after you…"


	10. Chapter 10: Inside the Enemy

**Inside the Enemy**

As the bricked fundament around my hovering body began to alternate with thick masses of grey withered webbing spreading on all sides I realized that my goal was almost within reach. I had already noticed earlier that with each upper tier the signs of the Zephonim's occupation were getting more and more flagrant, so it was not surprising that the topmost floor my brother resided at was the most infested of all. The thread covered everything in this area entirely imperturbably and at one time or another one could easily forget this was another part of the human-made building and not some natural underground spider's cave. This place was a pure embodiment of dark lurking menace, and the closer I was getting to its heart the more I felt its thrilling atmosphere penetrate into my every body cell.

When the vertical tunnel I was levitating through at last found its end I quit hold of my wings and caught at the nearest ledge, sinking with my talons into the greasy coat of rotten web it was enmeshed in.

After having mounted it I sat on its verge with my legs hanging low and took several minutes to gather my breath and summon my racing thoughts. The dilapidated bedding of the web the Zephonim had weaved here perhaps eons ago had long since lost its viscidity and turned out to be very comfortable to sit on, feeling like a soft dry haystack. From beneath the strong whiffs of airflow that had carried me here were gently licking at my clawed feet, also contributing to the unusual state of comfort I had so unexpectedly achieved through this moment of idleness.

For minutes I sat motionless and stared through the invisible updraft rising before me into nowhere, trying to calm the restless thoughts dashing through my head... the thoughts of my brother Zephon and my coming meeting with him after all the centuries that I spent burning in the waters of the Lake of the Dead and he spent living on this desecrated perishing land together with his clan, devolving into whatever the corruption had turned him into. My execution at the hands of Kain was not his fault, but like my other brethren Zephon attempted nothing at all to prevent it from happening. Like others he turned on me without a flicker of hesitation at the mere order of his Master as if a millennium of brotherhood lived together before the day of my punishment was meaningless to him. And when I was finally brought face to face with my own downfall and for the last time looked him in the eyes before being thrown into the abyss, I didn't see an ounce of affliction, grief or at least compassion of the former brotherly love in them – I saw the same cold-hearted indifference that was written on the faces of all my other siblings when they senselessly watched their own flesh and blood being humiliated and scourged for a crime he did not commit. After killing Melchiah and getting the first nauseating taste of fratricide I thought I would be able to cope with my boiling wrath and settle the dispute with the rest of my brothers without mercilessly taking their lives. But the closer I was getting to my encounter with Zephon, the more intense the memory of his treachery was returning to me, the stronger the long-awaited desire for revenge kept growing and the more unavoidable was becoming one comprehension – he, like all my other brethren, was beyond any forgiveness…

Before this vortex of painful reminisces and hating emotions had completely consumed me I caught myself realizing that time was too priceless now to be spent on empty contemplations, so I banished all the thoughts from my head and stood erect, turning to the side of the passage that lay behind me. I didn't cherish great hopes that the captured members of Bolgor's squadron that I was looking to rescue were still alive but as long as this was not set in stone I had to do everything in my hands to find them before it was too late.

So I strode into the depth of the tier, my feet poaching into the thick layer of web covering the floor with my every step. Just like in the lower tiers this level was another maze of entangled corridors and even though this area of the edifice was little but inaccessible to any intruders that could not scale vertical surfaces like the Zephonim it appeared that my brother had still decided to cautiously hunker in the very innermost of it.

Which would have been entirely in character for him.

Zephon, as I remembered him from the years of my vampire life, was neither a good warrior, nor a smart strategist, but there was one trait of his nature that he excelled in more than any of us did, and that was his cunningness. Suspicious and reticent, he never spoke much, but always sponged every word whispered around him, attempting to use all kinds of acquired information for his own benefit. He never trusted anyone, not even his own family, and constantly tried to protect himself from some nonexistent threats, creating unnecessary sophisticated schemes and spinning different intrigues around himself… so much like that web he and his offspring were wrapping their cloister in. It was almost ironic how the deeds of the past now seemed to have an influence on the consequences of the present, materializing in the direction of the degrading effect the corruption of the Pillars had on the clans.

Slowly the roaming walk through the twisting routes of this tier was starting to become a problem as there was no more outside assistance from Ariel or directions of the vampire hunters to guide me across the unfamiliar surroundings. I tried to make use of the recently emerged feeling of my brother's close presence, attempting to follow its visceral fluids like a compass needle, but unfortunately it did not work in a manner of this sort. The blood bond between the vampires could only alert a creature of the night whether a relative of his was alive or dead or close by in the terms of space, but to detect vampire's precise whereabouts one had to rely on other senses like smell or hearing. But Zephon was lurking too deep and too well for such reference points to be available to me, so gradually my blind searches were bringing me to an impasse.

When the confusion of helplessness already started entrammeling me all over a subliminal voice suddenly rang out of nowhere, lashing against my mind with its vehemence like a tidal wave breaking against the shore,

=_Raziel!_=

As unanticipated as was this abrupt rush of telepathic contact this time I took it with full calamity, for the retention of the previous time when I had experienced it was still very fresh in my memory. But what caused my abashment nonetheless was not the suddenness of the whispering echo, but rather its unexpectedness, since calling to me now with it was no other than the spirit of the former Balance Guardian, Ariel, who for now was one of those I was expecting least to hear. Last time we communicated with each other she was guiding me through this pandemonium, but after I had neglected one of her instructions the incarcerated female specter had gone silent as if having boycotted me. And now that I had already given up on her aid Ariel's spirit suddenly became interjoined with mine once again, which made me question whether my previous estimation of the whole situation was correct.

"Ariel?" I asked in surprise. "But I thought you…"

_=…Abandoned you?=_ she finished the phrase for me. =_I know. I was able to read your thoughts for some more time after the mental connection between us was lost.=_

Though her tone was perfectly neutral I could still sense the stifled rebuke and perhaps even dudgeon in every word she whispered.

=_The reason I have not spoken to you through all this time is because the state of the Pillars is worsening, and so do my powers…_= she proceeded. =_The energy remaining at my disposal doesn't let me maintain the mind contact for too long or establish it whenever I want, so it sometimes may come to a cease beyond my will. And last time it happened coincided with the moment you didn't follow my direction…_= She paused a little after this oration then added with an untypical note of joviality in her voice, _=…Which, honestly, I didn't really mind at all.=_

After Ariel had revealed these insights to me I had to stand silently for several more seconds as if riveted to the spot, trying to digest all the new information. Though she seemed to be excusing herself for her long silence with this explanation I very soon realized I was the one who had to be making excuses for having so wrongly and hastily discredited her loyalty to me as shame began to burn in the back of my head, making me feel like a guilty child that got told off by the parents.

"I… I'm sorry, Ariel… I should have never doubted you…" I said bashfully.

=_Let us delay all these sentiments, Raziel,_= she responded as always calmly. =_For there is still much work to be done. I have to lead you to your brother's lair before we're short of time again. You are nearly there already, so prepare yourself._=

Ariel was all business now, which was more than reasonable considering how things were going, so I abstained from any superfluous words and simply funneled all my concentration into the sense of her subliminal presence within my mind, ready and eager to follow her every guideline. If she was truly able to read my thoughts as she had claimed to then I hoped she could now feel the veritable depth of my shame and regret for having misjudged her even without my telling her straight about it. But more important than this I hoped that she could also sense another very odd and at the same time pleasant feeling I was experiencing now probably for the first time in my entire existence - a feeling of happiness from finding out that I was actually wrong… wrong in my judgment of someone I really needed right now to be by my side as my partner and supporter and guide me through this long and lonely quest…

* * *

One corridor was passing into another, then into another and then into another as I kept crossing them thick and fast with Ariel's voice again guiding me like a lighthouse shining through the darkness of the night for a sea-quartering ship. From afar I could hear how the whole space of the cathedral was beginning to fill with droning sound of the organs as the airflow I had used formerly to gain altitude and ascend this level was passing through their lines. The humming noise felt rather subtle and clearly lacked the loudness and frequency that could be harmful to delicate vampiric hearing, so I strongly doubted whether Moldgar's prediction about the pipes still having the capacity to purify the edifice from the Zephonim's occupation was correct. However, while running through the passages I could not help noticing that the intensity of the hum produced by the organs was slowly, but steadily growing, which made me wonder how much longer it could continue to increase that way.

Over time the walls and the ceiling of the tunnels I was straying through began to have dozens of webbing hasps hanging attached to their thread-cloaked surface. Unlike the hasps I had discovered on the third tier these ones had their tissue so tightly tauten around the figures of the beings enwrapped in them that even without carefully looking I could still descry that swathed inside them were pupating Zephonim, the contours of their hideous tusked snouts and angular bodies prominently showing through the pulsing skin of the cocoons.

So this was another nest the Zephonim had laid inside this building and in view of the fact that the vampire larvae needed to be fed with blood periodically whatever preys the children of my brother could hold captive here had to be kept somewhere close by.

=_Raziel!=_ Ariel's voice suddenly brought me out of my calculations, resonating within the confines of my mind.

"Yes?" I asked alarmed.

=_There's something going wrong around._= she answered in a worried tone.

"What is it?" I asked her again, at once skidding to a stop and starting to look about me.

=_I don't know,_= the female specter replied. =_But it feels inimical._=

I pivoted on my heels back and forth in look for any signs of something hazardous, but failed to see or sense anything. The air was quiet and still except for the honking noise of the cathedral's pipes continuing to gradually spread farther and farther throughout the space of the tier, while the cocooned ghouls around me could constitute no threat as long as they remained in their deep sleep of evolution.

For an instant I was about to think that Ariel was mistaken in her anticipation but then all of a flutter a chapping squelching sound came from the rear, at once assuaging these doubts of mine.

Alerted, I turned around and beheld one of the cocoons beginning to crack and split with a lot of thick disgusting green slime oozing from the fissures in its tissue. In less than no time it burst completely and the pupating Zephonim vampire that used to be enlaced in it started to hatch out of the cocoon like a nestling squeaker breaking its eggshell, roaring loudly and splashing multiple drippings of mucus from its dystrophic husk.

At the sight of this I instantly unclenched my talons, intending to end it quickly before the beast's untimely emergence could cause me any troubles, but in the following moment other cocoons around me began to burst in the same manner with more arachnids continuing to hatch out of them one after another.

In a matter of seconds I was already surrounded by no less than several dozens of newly fledged ghouls vigorously abandoning their pupal chambers and disentangling themselves from the gluttonous bile-like substance that used to sustain them inside the webbing shells during their hibernation period.

At first I was ready to believe that it was simply bad luck that these wretches had to start hatching the very moment I was coming near but then as the spreading background buzz of the sounding organs continued to make me even more nettled than I already was I momentarily comprehended what was the true reason for this seeming coincidence.

It was the growing honk from the pipes that was now waking the Zephonim out of their sleep of evolution.

Although the sound was too obtuse to be of any actual harm to the vampires, given their general susceptibility to its power it must have still been disturbing enough for their hearing to have awoken them. Apparently the pupating vampires remained extremely sensitive to sound even inside the cocoons, which explained how the ringing of the cathedral's bell on the lower tier managed to annihilate an entire pupating nest of theirs.

Though it took the roused Zephonim some time to recover after perhaps centuries of dormancy those of them that had completely freed themselves from the webbing and slime by now seemed to be gradually starting to react to my presence. With every elapsing second the number of the unbound beasts kept growing and though these spawns had to be seriously weakened after passing the long period of change, rushing into a fight against so many of them at a time would still not be very reasonable. Besides, there was no Soul Reaver to back me up at the moment and my energy had already waned a little after the time I had lately spent straying through this tier without the blade to sustain me.

All the signs showed that the combat was not preferable and as several new-born leeches lastly began to slowly advance on me I realized I had to do a not very valiant, but necessary thing, and that was to retreat. But instead of trying to run away through their crowd or sneak off them in some other way I simply waved my hands in a mystic gesture, willing myself to shift to the spectral realm.

The environment distorted with a loud moan-like sound as the manifold scanty figures around me started disappearing in the bluish darkness of the dead world. I always hated the idea of receding from any combat, no matter how difficult or dangerous it could seem, but for now I knew I had to value the time and not waste it on some useless peddling brawls that could be easily avoided if wanted.

=_That was wise._= Ariel whispered to me.

"I know." I replied dryly. "Now I suggest we continue our way."

With these words I turned my face toward where her voice had been leading me before this moment and once again broke into a run.

* * *

After retreating to the spectral realm there was nothing to bar my path anymore and so my progress had accelerated both spatially and temporarily. Even my feet stopped sinking into the web-covered ground all the time, for in this dimension that sticky substance that coated the fundament had turned into a flat steadfast shadow of itself.

Nevertheless, I still had to stray through a good dozen wiggling annexes before the subliminal echo of Ariel had finally brought me to what she indicated to be my endpoint.

The location I had been searching for all along turned out to be a broad circular entrance leading into an obscure chamber that was going so deep into wherever it was immersing that I could not even approximately descry from outside of it what lay at its distant end, let alone in the nebulous atmosphere of the world of the dead. The closer part of the chamber was more illuminated than its depth, but with the misty brume of the eidolon reality relentlessly distorting my sight none of the surroundings could be discerned in detail, so I decided not to even bother myself trying to scrutinize anything here until I was in the material realm again.

Making no delay, I walked into the chamber and at once spotted a planar portal flaring brightly in the near corner to the right of me. The long time I had spent wandering through this tier had already restored all my consumed soul energy and now I was ready to transfer myself to the real world.

But before I could even step upon the burning ring of the conduit a gelid screech broke from somewhere above me, sending a chilling wave of tremor through my skin.

Startled, I looked up and saw the most dangerous entity of the non-corporeal realm flying over my head with a loud rustle of its tattered robe-like attire – the vampire wraith. The last time I faced one of these creatures in a combat was when I infiltrated the Melchiahim clan territory and back then the spectral predator that I crossed paths with managed to cause me some tangible difficulties with its nasty soul-sucking ability. But now I had the wraith blade to strengthen my position against my new opponent, so I quickly raised it ready to use, showing the feral phantom my complete willingness to accept its challenge.

The dark-robed wraith wheeled around my frame several more times and then hung in mid-air in front of me for a moment, yawping at me with its beady red eyes blazing from its hood. Then it violently dove at me with its claws shot forth, but I adroitly jumped back and nicked the barbarized vampire spirit with the sword across its semisolid body.

The flying phantom backed off with a yelp and flanked to the left of me, starting to hesitatingly hover now to one side and now to the other as if thinking over a new tactic of assaulting me.

After a little protraction it attempted for another dive from an unusual angle, which I was still able to counter again.

The same repeated two more times until the Reaver lastly burned out the wraith's defense and left it a moaning transparent spirit that at once got absorbed by the blade's green flame. As always, my symbiotic weapon fraternally shared its prey with me as I felt my soul-hunger becoming a little bit less poignant after the sword's feeding.

The skirmish with the predator of the Underworld appeared to be so much easier than I expected that it even left me with an unusual feeling of dissatisfaction from a challenge so weak. But once I remembered that there was still a confrontation with my brother awaiting me ahead I understood that the opportunity to quench my appetite for a good fight would most likely present itself later.

As I finally stood upon the portal to the material dimension Ariel again called to me with her sweet cushioned voice,

=_Be careful once you meet with your brother, Raziel. Through all the eons that passed after your execution he has become much more dangerous than he ever was before._=

"I would have been more surprised if you'd told me he hasn't." I returned a bit playfully, bearing in mind the experience I had had with his arthropod-like posterity. Then I changed to a serious vein again, "Don't worry about me, Ariel. As long as I'm able to return to the spirit world Zephon can do me no harm…"

=_Unless only he too has learned to invade the pit of this realm._= the female specter remarked.

This thought had not even crossed my mind before and as Ariel pointed it out I realized I had completely overlooked such probability. Considering that even Melchiah somehow learned to travel between two dimensions while being the most underdeveloped of our brood I could now very well expect the same from Zephon too. Of course, Melchiah's unsuspected ability could simply be explained by his deformed rotting carcass teetering on the brink of two worlds like a walking corpse, but it was still an admonishment that my second sibling could also be laying some other 'surprises' in store for me, so I made a mental note not to be reckless when battling him on the material plane.

As I fixed this idea in my memory I once again addressed myself to Ariel,

"Regardless of what will be the outcome of my meeting with Zephon, I want to thank you for all your kind support, Ariel. Without your guidance I would have never made it this far."

=_My guidance has only saved you some time that you could have spent on wandering through the routes you were not familiar with._= she replied. =_But it was you alone who came up with the schemes that helped you overcome all your hardships even when I could not to be around. It is not your blade, but your own mind that is your most powerful weapon, Raziel. Remember this when you confront your brother._=

On this note Ariel's mental presence gently vanished from the vaults of my conscience like smoke fading through an opened window. I didn't know if she had run out of energy to maintain the telepathic connection or if she was simply done talking to me, but it no longer mattered. She had already done for me everything she possibly could for now and even more than that, and what still remained to be done was only for me to cope with.

With this comprehension I concentrated and shifted to the material realm, letting the grains of matter start gathering around my astral composition like a hundred thousand insects swarming over some incredibly odoriferous flower. In the same instant the surrounding atmosphere of the chamber I manifested inside began to retrieve its true self, encircling me with the kind of interior that my eye turned out to be totally unprepared for.

The room that emerged around me greeted me with a gaudy mixture of different shades of red color that changed from scarlet-red to dark-wined in different parts of the place. After having seen nothing but dark dull corridors with all their dingy bricked fundament and the grey rotten webbing of the Zephonim covering it here and there it felt very unusual to sight something that bright and colorful inside this drab edifice.

As my eyes became more of less accustomed to the new oriflamme environment I managed to make out that the source of this redness was some strange tuberous substance that imperturbably coated both the walls of the chamber and the floor under my feet. This succulent essence felt soft and elastic to stand upon and in combination with its color resembled some sort of muscular tissue.

The lateral walls of the chamber were covered in this substance as well; however, there were also a number of broad grey pillars showing through their red surface that looked to be carrying their flesh-like fundament. These pillars had an uneven shape, widening from the bottom up to the middle and then again tapering from the middle upwards, which made them look like two rows of colossal disjointed bones.

The repetitive associations of the room's décor elements with different anatomic notions were making me feel as if the conduit I had just entered in the spectral realm had somehow transferred me inside the body of some gigantic creature, and when I arrived at this ridiculous idea I couldn't help but snort aloud at the absurdity of my own deductions.

After a short moment of standstill I started striding into the depth of the room and with every next pace I made the gloomy space of the chamber's distant end was slowly beginning to become revealed to me.

When I got close enough for my vision to be able to penetrate through the cloak of darkness shielding this field I saw an enormous beige knob standing there, rising over my head for about ten feet if not more. The knob was pulpy and grumous, all covered in thick blue pulsing veins, while its skin was slowly shrinking in and out as if breathing. It also had a wide black hole adorning its front side that was looking directly onto me.

As I lifted my gaze a bit to get a broader view of the inconceivable structure I noticed a long finned stem growing from its top and rising high upwards. It looked like a thin trunk of a shriveled tree, which ramified into more stems that were spreading in different directions. All these twig-like sprouts were twining high toward the upper corners of the chamber and from the spot where I stood now there was no way to discern what these odd appendages really were.

I had no faintest idea what I was staring at now and whether this thing was even alive or not, but even more than that I could not understand what this whole place had to do with my brother and where he was at the moment if this was supposed to be the heart of his lair.

Suddenly the upper parts of this whole ramified structure began to creak loudly in a sound of an old wooden door being flung open and all its sprouts started trembling as if trying to limber up from stiffness after a long period of immobility.

I cautiously drew back from the abruptly stirring object as four of its manifold appendages began to bend forth tightly, inch by inch writhing out of the shades that used to clothe them.

As they finally hung out above me I realized what those things were.

Limbs. Humongous insect-like limbs, each one ending with crooked mandible claws that resembled colossal scythes. Just like the interior of the chamber they consisted of both the red-colored substance that seemed to serve as flesh of a sort and the osseous structure that formed the innate blades protruding from it. Now there could be no doubt left that this impossible phenomenon before me was a living creature, but what manner of one it exactly was still remained in prospect of being found out.

Before I could delve deeply into any speculations as to what kind of monstrosity I was dealing with here the stem on the top of the throbbing phleboid mass in front of me creakingly bent forward as well, exposing a huge bony conglomeration growing on its top and carrying all those limbs that were now smoothly beetling over me. The stem appeared to be something like a spinal column, while the bones it supported had to be the creature's thorax.

Like the arachnid ghouls I had encountered heretofore this thing had a scraggy, nearly fleshless ribcage, only of a greater size. It also had the same frill-like protrusion showing from out of its back like those I had seen on the adult Zephonim, only this time it seemed to be not a dermal, but a bony excrescence. The being's exoskeleton was growing outside its flesh and formed some kind of a natural carapace around it, while that red carneous substance its body was made of remained hidden behind the prominent bones, intensively pulsing under their shell like a heart's muscle.

And then the third creak was heard from high above as the insect-like beast bent its bony neck and bowed it over me, displaying its massive head, which happened to be probably the strangest and the most horrid part of its terrifying appearance. It was a large crested skull dividing into two vertical osseous extensions that looked like a doubled crown of huge crooked horns. Aside from this horrible feature the monster also had an extremely salient and pinched chin and a pair of yellow pupilless eyes with short dissonance between them. The only two things about the being's deformed face that mysteriously retained a humanoid form were its nose and lips, but together with its other dismaying habits they only added more sickening perversity to the creature's abominable exterior view.

For a second or two I stood dead and peered into the bloodcurdling frame of the monstrosity that literally towered over me with all its enormous mass. It was like no other being I had ever seen - a gigantic mutated spider or a mantis, perhaps. There was a mixture of emotions I was experiencing from watching it: terror, revulsion, puzzlement… And yet, there was one that was the most distinct and thus frightening among all of them – the feeling of familiarity.

This spectacle that reality had presented to me could surely seem foreign and confusing at first glance, but my inner instincts were telling me different. The more I kept looking at the hideous beast in front of me, the more I couldn't resist the burning visceral vibes of blood tie that felt as ever strong even after eons of separation. And though I would have loved to reject all the sensations of kinship coming from my very core and force myself into believing I was mistaken in my assumptions, gradually I could not help but perceive that this vile abhorrence I was beholding now was no other but my brother Zephon.

The very instant I came to this conclusion the crest on the monster's head abruptly pulled apart in two halves like a folding gate, while its bottom jaw dropped down low, revealing an immense mouth full of long sharp teeth. Then the spider-like giant sharply twitched with its whole bone-shelled carcass and brought forth its scraggy neck at me, its nightmare of a face stopping in the air just a few feet away from where I was standing.

Once the beast's beady yellow eyes were nearly level with mine it opened its exposed chaps wide and deliriously roared at me to what seemed to be the full capacity of its lungs. The sound of the growl was loud and squeaky, jarring on my eardrums like a thousand knives and touching my very spirit with utter consternation.

When the fiend was done roaring it retracted its neck, while all the extendible parts of its head-crest folded back into their former places, again hiding the sharp-toothed jaws. Clearly the purpose of this bizarre animalistic snarl was to intimidate me from the very beginning of our confrontation and unfortunately for me I couldn't say it failed to do so.

Tensed with alarm, I carefully backtracked from the titan for a couple of paces so as to be closer to the exit from the chamber in case there would be a real need to back off, but just as I even thought of such possibility the circular entrance behind me started shriveling and converging like skin shrinking from cold.

As soon as I detected that I quickly tried to run up to the tapering pass, but in less than a second it already closed completely, having become imperviously covered with the same red membrane that coated the walls and the floor of the room. In the same moment a high-pitched nasal voice rang out from abaft of me as the incogitable creature I attempted to escape from spoke to me for the very first time,

"The prodigal son..." it snuffled. "There is no returning for you, Raziel."

After that phrase all the doubts that could have possibly remained as to the identity of the beast had fallen down completely, and the terrible realization that I had been so reluctant to yield this entire time had finally become too blatant to continue being denied. This gargantuan insect-like deformity was my blood brother Zephon – the second-to-last vampire son and lieutenant of Kain and the leader of the Zephonim clan.

No matter how hard I had been trying to prepare myself for discovering how miserably the corruption had profaned another one of my former family, it still failed to deliver me from the usual feeling of shock that always came with the perception of what had happened to my siblings. Regardless of the fact that I deeply hated my brethren for their betrayal and wanted to avenge myself by destroying them all, I still couldn't help feeling pained to see the way evolution had treated our once noble dynasty. Just like Melchiah, Zephon had no ounce of his former vampire self left in him anymore – he was a monster now, a perverted parody of the person that I remembered him to be. The ages we spent apart from each other had mercy for neither of us, and now he appeared just as ruined as I was after my centuries-old torment. Like the rest of my brethren Zephon paid his own price for helping Kain establish his tyrannical Empire on the corrupted deceasing land of Nosgoth.

But was this price enough to correct his fault for his treachery?

When I inwardly asked myself this question the stream of painful memories had once again overwhelmed me. One by one the last agonizing images of the past started unremittingly gloating in my mind: Kain tearing out the bones from my wings… All my brethren standing around watching and doing absolutely nothing to stop it… The sight of the whirlpool at the bottom of the abyss… The eons of infinite torture in the scalding waters of the Lake of the Dead… Pain… Humiliation… Despair… Anger… Madness…

No.

That was not enough.

Zephon had not redeemed himself yet.

He deserved to die.

And then I realized that it was not the monster Zephon that I had to annihilate now. It was the vampire Zephon - the same one that I remembered from my previous life, now lurking somewhere deep inside this new devolved form; the very same cowardly hypocrite who turned his back on me centuries ago. His appearance could have changed over time, but his black traitorous soul remained within his frame, and I would devour it just like I devoured the soul of Melchiah.

As I grasped this understanding a new sensation of everything was suddenly born inside me and I slowly turned my gaze back to my wretched brother, but this time with my eyes regarding him from an entirely different angle.

"Zephon," I referred to him with unveiled contempt. "Your visage becomes you. It's an appropriate reflection of your soul..."

"...And you are not His handsome Raziel anymore." he talked back in his nasty scrannel voice like that of a wriggling court jester. "His precious first-born son, turned betrayer. You have missed so many changes, little Raziel. Look around you. See how the humans' weapon of destruction has become my home... Indeed, my body. A cocoon of brick and granite from which to watch a pupating world..."

Upon that phrase another loud creak boomed within the chamber's space, but this time it didn't come from where Zephon's bulk was placed, but instead sounded from somewhere high above.

I looked up at the room's ceiling and saw another two pairs of gigantic limbs slowly descending from there, all clicking and crackling unpleasantly. Similarly to the four limbs that grew out of Zephon's thorax these were also disturbingly lengthy, thin and jointed, with their bony structure growing outward and forming sharp scythe-like blades at their ends. Gradually they sank so low they became almost level with my head, surrounding me in a hazardous square. So this was what Zephon meant when se said that this place had become his body. Somehow he had literally grown into the very fundament of this building, and now the cathedral was him and he was the cathedral. At last it was clear why everything about this chamber's interior resembled different anatomical elements so much. These were all parts of my sibling's mutated body: the pillars carrying the lateral walls were his bones, while the red meaty substance covering the walls and the floor appeared to be his own flesh.

Then all of a flutter I sensed a dizzying mixture of disgust and scorn begin to boil within me that I was hardly able to stand it. For in one momentary rush of realization I understood that Zephon was actually proud of what he had turned into. The madness of Nupraptor the Mentalist that poisoned his mind and his body and reduced his own children to irrational mindless animals seemed to be an amusement to him, and that was obnoxious to say the least. Even Melchiah who managed to evolve far beyond his former weak self was so much embarrassed and repulsed by the abomination he had become that he even wished to die only to release himself from this defilement. But Zephon was speaking of his new loathsome form with pride and vanity as if it was something that was worth being glorified. Not only didn't he regret the way the corruption had desecrated his offspring and himself – he was enjoying such despicable existence. Evidently I was wrong in my earlier presumption that Zephon was already penalized for his crimes by inhabiting this odious carcass. His one and only payment was his ultimate obliteration and now I was dying to make it happen.

"A crevice in which to cower, only scuttling from the shadows to devour a victim already ensnared in your cowardly trap." I disdainfully objected to his previous tirade. "But you've made the mistake of leaving me unbound, and it is you who must succumb to my will."

"Will... instinct... reflex action... the insect mind finds little difference." Zephon retorted. "I warn you, brother - as my stature has grown, so it is matched by my appetite. Step forward, morsel..."


	11. Chapter 11: A Trap for the Spider

**A Trap for the Spider**

The helmet-like crest on Zephon's skull unfolded anew and then the shrillest growl of rampage once again disgorged from its exposed toothed chaps, heralding the beginning of our combat. Thereupon one of the limbs that grew out of his thorax stormily swept at me with great amplitude, as I jerkily somersaulted backwards, avoiding the scythe-like mandible a fraction of a second before it disjoined me in half. Despite the colossal size Zephon's extremities were very mobile and swift and since he had as many as eight of those like a real spider dodging all of his shots would most certainly constitute an issue.

I landed about ten feet away from where Zephon's body was, although the word 'body' was rather relative, since technically my brother's corpus occupied this whole room's space and maybe even more than this.

Once my feet touched the carneous fabric covering the ground the four limbs that hung from the chamber's ceiling began to fiercely drop on me one after another like guillotine blades.

Having no split-second to even think over any further move I started erratically rolling away from the hammering falls of the insect-like appendages, but just as I narrowly evaded one limb the next one was already coming down on me with vicious fastness. With his overgrown body surrounding me from all sides possible Zephon literally dominated me like a bug that he held caught in his gigantic palm, and in such advantageous position destroying me was only the matter of seizing the moment to swat that bug with the other palm.

After I miraculously eluded three slamming blows of my brother's limbs the fourth one finally found its mark as the sharpen point of the last appendage to drop on me plunged into my right foot, stripping me of the Soul Reaver's power and nailing me to the floor. The damage at once stole more than half of my soul energy, resulting in my vision going swimmy and blank for an instant.

I was dead sure that Zephon would be quick to capitalize on this stun of mine and already prepared for getting hurled back to the world of the dead, but surprisingly enough my sense of sight recovered itself even before the next attack was descended upon me.

As the veil of dizziness in my eyes dissipated at last I saw that all the four limbs Zephon had brought down on my frame were tightly stuck in the coat of his own flesh that thickly encroached on the floor's fundament. The devolved leader of the Zephonim clan grunted angrily as his lodged extremities started convulsively jittering, trying to break away from the heavy bed of the dark-red substance they sank in. There was no moment like now that was so perfect for assuming the offensive, but unfortunately I was firmly staked to the spot together with the pillar-like appendage that impaled my foot and was restraining me now like leg iron.

Eventually one by one my brother started retrieving its humongous limbs from the layer of his own flesh they got stuck in and I fathomed that I had to quickly move out of their way before they would start collapsing on me again. But due to my temporal 'enchainment' there was not much choice of ways to go left at my disposal, so when the last limb that was pinning me to the ground finally wallowed up I strongly braced it with both my arms and my good leg like a stem of a tree.

Once Zephon lifted its unbound appendage together with me clasping it, I hung on its pincer-like protrusion as if it was a cable, digging with my talons into the tough exoskeleton to strengthen my grip.

At the sight of me grabbing hold of his body part the leader of the arachnid vampires harrumphed wonderingly and began to twist its mandible up and down in an attempt to dislodge me.

"Get off of me, you leech!" he screamed with nasal resonance in his voice.

I tried to cling to the flouncing limb with my claws biting into its osseous tissue as deep as they could, the lower part of my husk waggling left and right like a reed in the wind. After being able to withstand the irresistibly powerful shaking for some time I tried to mount the appendage I held onto like a rope to get to its less bony upper side, for it seemed to be the only part of this enormous outgrowth that could be vulnerable to any attacks. But Zephon continued to jolt its limb so forcefully that I very soon realized it was impossible to climb it up and maintain the balance at the same time. Nevertheless I remained determined to reach the top section of this jointed extremity, and though I could hardly focus on anything except striving to refrain from falling off it, at some point my mind managed to compound a way of doing this.

Upon another sharp twitch of the Zephon's limb I brusquely quit hold of its pincer and using the momentum of the limb itself propelled toward the nearest lateral wall. Then I turned somersaults in mid-air so I could hinge upon the wall's surface with my feet, and once I did, I bounced back from it with acceleration straight toward the muscled section of my brother's mandible I had just jumped off.

My talons reflexively made a clutching move and I caught hold of the upper part of the limb, tucking deep into the elastic tissue of flesh that covered it.

Before Zephon could start trying to shake me off it again I quickly pulled myself up, clasping the appendage's joint with both legs for better equilibrium, then began to savagely lacerate its flesh with my claws.

Blood sprayed on all sides from the torn fragments of muscle as my mutated sibling gave his first ear-piercing scream of pain that seemed to have sent a wave of vibration across the entire chamber's space. Just as my intuition had told me earlier the muscular part of the Zephon's limbs was less solid and protected than those bony scythe-like protrusions at their ends, so if there was a means of crushing those appendages without the help of the Reaver then it had to lie with focusing all my attacks on these weak spots of theirs.

Zephon started feverishly wallowing with all its limbs, partly in anguish and partly still in an effort to throw me off him, but this time I was snatching at his mandible with a grip of steel and continued to methodically tear at the flesh that held its joints together, desperately trying to reach for the bone.

When the first gleams of marrow finally showed through the bloodied fragments of shredded muscle my corrupted brother attempted perhaps the last thing that was left for him and poignantly flourished his limb that I was holding onto high upwards, shoving my carcass right into the chamber's ceiling.

My ribs cracked from hard impact as I flaccidly released my grip of the appendage and collapsed all the way down, dropping some fifty feet on the floor. It took almost all my remaining energy to prevent my body from totally combing against the ground, but after I survived the fall from such great height I realized I had scarcely any power left to sustain me on the material plane.

As my broken frame began to blink and twinkle with desolation I tried to call on the last leftovers of my strength and promptly return to my feet, but before my body was even able to respond to any of my commands I saw one of the limbs that hung above me from the ceiling starting to menacingly raise over me for what seemed to be the finishing blow.

At this very juncture the unpleasant high-pitched voice of Zephon again called to me from afore, its tone now a mixture of taunt and sadistic joy,

"You should have stayed in hell, Raziel!"

Upon this scoff he viciously dropped his edged extremity on me, spearing me straight through the chest.

Stinging gouts of blue blood that was my soul energy sprinkled before my eyes and then everything began to go black as I sensed my spiritual frame helplessly flowing away into the spectral dimension.

* * *

As I regained consciousness everything around me had already turned dark and cobalt as if my body had just been tossed into the innermost depths of an ocean. Luckily for me a defeat on the plane of the physical world didn't mean a death to me, but merely sent me back to the spectral realm where I could regenerate and then again return from there to the material dimension as if nothing had happened. Nevertheless I could not help feeling angered and ashamed of myself to have let Zephon best me, for if it had not been for my ability to retreat to the world of the dead I would have already been destroyed by now.

But once I aligned on my feet and took a view about me I comprehended that it was too early to talk about safety, for the four titanic insect-like limbs hanging from the room's ceiling that had just obliterated me in the material realm turned out to be still present here. And so was the rest of my brother's abundant bulk that was visible in the distant end of the chamber, its form and color having become more blurry and shadowy like those most inhabitants of the Underworld usually had. Just as Ariel warned me before Zephon also appeared to have developed an ability to traverse between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead, and now the recognition that that prediction of her turned out to be correct made me experience the first real germs of unrest begin growing within me. First Melchiah, and now he… Could it be that the power of shifting from one dimension to another was an inalienable part of our dynasty's evolution?

Enveloped by the burning influence of my own self-preservation instinct I desperately darted away from the spot I used to stand on, trying to get as far as possible from the hazardous reach of my brother's limbs.

I ran off like mad a good dozen yards until I came to grips with the exit from the chamber which also remained closed in this dimension.

When there was nowhere to run anymore I skittishly turned around and raised the wraith blade in defense, preparing to repulse whatever attack would be brought down on me.

But then much to my astonishment I saw that the four limbs I had tried to scour away from continued to hang indifferently still, not one of them even attempting to make any move in my direction, or even any move at all. The rest of the Zephon's bulk at the far end of the room was also immobile and slumberous, while Zephon himself was surprisingly silent, making no sonorous growls of rage or rancid comments on my 'cowardly retreat' which I was sure he would be declaiming.

At first I believed it was simply a joking move with the purpose of luring me into a surprise assault, so I went on keeping the distance and waiting for my degraded sibling to finally drop his façade of feigned inactivity and enter into fight with me. But as Zephon continued to remain completely passive and motionless like a statue I gradually began to think there was some other reason for his unexpected inertness.

Suspicious now, I lowered my sword and started cautiously approaching the four dangling mandibles in the middle of the room, though still ready to spring into action at any moment in case it would turn out to be a set-up. With every next pace I made all the limbs kept perfectly still and when I approached one of them almost within a hair's breadth I lastly managed to discern some peculiarities in their outward that I didn't notice earlier because of my fussiness.

Both the appendages hanging from the ceiling and the main mass of my brother's body in the distant part of the chamber were all glimmering slightly as if being on the verge of fading away. This looked similar to what happened to my own frame when I absorbed too much damage on the material plane and my energy barely sufficed to hold together the matter collected around it.

In any case there seemed that Zephon was either unable to see or attack me here, so once I realized this, I hurried to make use of this fascinating discovery and violently swung with the Reaver at the limb I was standing nigh to.

But then to my great disappointment the blow I launched proved to be unavailing – the sword's firing blade just phased all the way through the pendent shady pincer as if it was transparent. I tried several more shots then, but they all came to be fruitless too.

Unwilling to give up my efforts, I stubbornly ran up toward where Zephon's main body was placed and attempted to apply the same manouevre, but no miracle happened this time as well and his cyclopean arthropod bulk remained fixed and intact just as before. It was almost as if my brother was nominally present in this realm, but his astral frame was only an illusion, an inanimate shadow, just like water which stood in the spirit world as thin as air. Perchance this was the consequence of his carcass having merged with the fundament of the cathedral as he had put it to me before. Since the cathedral was a material object and could be found in both physical and spectral dimensions, Zephon was presumably beginning to share that quality of his new body, slowly learning to project his spirit into the plane of the Underworld. Apparently he was just not yet developed enough to be able to emerge in the spectral realm completely and the perfection of this skill could be a matter of several more centuries of evolution.

Well, at least it meant that Zephon posed no threat to me in this realm and I could stop being concerned about the risk of getting vanquished by him for good and all. However, this revelation also indicated that my brother could only be defeated in the space of reality and in this regard I had to find the way back to the material realm and finish what I had already started there.

With this concept born in my mind I strode back to the opposite end of the chamber, looking for the conduit I had discovered there earlier when I first infiltrated this lair. Thankfully it was still on its place, which was a great fortune, for if this had not been the case I would be trapped in this room with the only way out of it sealed tight in both dimensions.

But what was less fortunate was that the chamber was deprived of any essences of the dead that could provide me with the sustenance I required to be able to enter the world of the living, and therefore there was nothing for me to do now but to wait for the ambience of the spectral realm to restore my soul energy with its healing touch. This would certainly take a lot of time, but hopefully time was something I had in swarms right now, for in this dimension it always stood as still as death…

* * *

Even though the spectral realm existed beyond the rim of time, I could still sense its seemingly impalpable stream slowly go by while I was sitting on the areola of the planar portal in wait for the replenishment of my soul energy. Despite having nothing to do and nothing to attract my attention here for some reason I was unable to let my thoughts rest right now and constantly remained strained and focused, which was only evermore prolonging the moment of my waiting. Notwithstanding that this world was my new habitat there was something about it that always stressed me so much that I could never really feel safe here, even when knowing that I was beyond reach of any phantom predators or my enemies from the material realm. A wraith or not, but I still felt alien here, and I could hardly believe that any sentient being that happened to inhabit this place as well could feel the other way.

When the conduit underneath me abruptly glared with bright white flux of bundled ions I understood that the environment of the dead world had finally remedied me outright, and so I vividly jumped back to my feet, hastening to recollect the matter around my spiritual body.

Then, repeating the already customary ritual of mine, I closed my eyes and concentrated on shifting to another dimension, and when I opened them after that the obscure nebulous shades of the eidolon reality started to become replaced with the rich and colorful shades of red.

As I manifested completely I saw that Zephon's overhead extremities had also retrieved their real form and animation and now were again moving and clicking with their natural vivacity.

Raising the Reaver blade at the ready, I began to carefully step up in their direction until I discerned the rest of my brother's prodigious carcass towering in the distance with his large crested head inclined low over the ground as if looking for something. Then I discerned that his gaze was fixed on the spot where he had just dismantled me and I perceived that the object of his search was my dead body. After he had destroyed me my spirit vanished from here into the spectral realm, and since Zephon knew nothing of my realm-shifting abilities the sudden disappearance of my 'corpse' obviously was a surprise to him.

But as soon as I got close enough for him to notice my presence he sharply twitched with his long-craned neck that carried his hideous head and his beady yellow eyes widened at me with unabashed bewilderment.

"You?!" he squeaked. "Impossible! I have just decimated you!"

"Your resistance is futile, Zephon." I returned serenely. "You cannot destroy me. Give in now, and I promise I will end this quickly."

In response to my advice to surrender the crest on my brother's skull just once again slid apart and its revealed mouth spewed a foul discrete cackling shriek that appeared to be a perverted form of laughter. Then the leader of the Zephonim clan spoke to me again,

"You must have had all your brains dissolved in the abyss if you believe I will simply do nothing and let you kill me, Raziel! As long as I remain alive there is no way for you to escape from this place, and even if I cannot destroy you I will make sure you will remain here forever as my all-time captive! My home will become your prison for eternity!"

As much as I hated to admit it, but Zephon had his point: despite him being incapable of obliterating me he still had me trapped here in his lair now, and until I would find a way to send him to oblivion I would remain his prisoner.

I had to recapture the initiative and I had to do it quickly.

Infused with persistence, I feinted toward the central part of the chamber, deliberately trying to get closer to the four appendages hanging from the ceiling.

It was not long before Zephon once again attempted to break off my movement and in less than no time his limbs immediately began dropping on me one after another.

But this once this course of action was the very one I was counting on.

Using all my speed and agility and also my fresh recollection of the way these insect-like extremities moved I started relentlessly leaping away from the descending pincers, letting them plunge into Zephon's own flesh that covered this room's floor like a rug and get stuck in there. Keeping in mind the experience I had recently had with these things I now knew that they also had their weak spots, but to make use of them these nimble appendages had to be immobilized at first.

When the fourth limb that was thrown on me missed my husk by mere feet and also stuck in the lump of tissue on the ground I rapidly took a jump on the top of its osseous clawed part and began to shin it up like a pole, trying to get to where the limb's flesh was less protected by the shell of bone.

The appendage trembled frantically as Zephon kept straining to pull it out of the thick meaty substance that was the extension of his own body, but this time it was not enough to fling me down and I still managed to reach the limb's upper joint before toppling over.

As I did, I took another leap into the air and brought down the wraith blade right on the muscular part of my brother's mandible like an executioner swinging down his axe to chop his victim's head.

The sword's flaring corpus scorched its way through the flesh-mould joint and then the limb's lower pincer-like part came off, it's stump still remaining driven into the ground like a stake.

The screech of pain Zephon made in response was like the most strident pig-like squeal, as the rest of his lodged limbs violently erupted from the floor they were enmeshed in and then started promiscuously twisting around and above, sometimes accidentally hitting the side walls and leaving huge jags in them.

Realizing that my brother finally became open to an attack I precipitately ran up to the main part of his body, looking to deliver a shot to his spinal column and thus sever his entire vertical base.

But on the spur of the moment Zephon managed to come up with a countering move and when I hopped to cut him in two he fanned me away in mid-air with one of his limbs like some troublesome fly, taking away the Reaver's power from me and flinging me far back to the middle of the room. Luckily the limb's claw caught me with its blunt outer side and did not carve my flesh, but the blow was still so forceful it made me see stars once I landed on the ground after receiving it.

I had to waggle my head to get rid of this grogginess and when my vision cleared at last the first thing to come into my view were the three remaining overhead limbs of my deformed sibling drooping all over me and looking to be cocked for a shot.

Quick off the mark I leapt aside from the spot I was lying on as one of the appendages yarely swept behind me like a gigantic pendulum, slightly catching the membrane of wings growing out of my back. Though I expected Zephon to try the same hammering blows he applied on me earlier before he was no fool to be caught twice with the same bait and evidently decided to start brandishing at me with his limbs instead of dropping them so they would stop getting stuck in his own sprawling flesh. This was a wise tactic, indeed, but it had its disadvantages too: his overhead limbs hung vertically and thus didn't fit for brandishing moves as much as they did for hammering ones, which is why his strikes began to lack their former velocity and became easier for me to dodge. Nevertheless with the wraith blade's energy already lost and all these extremities now constantly remaining mobile I had to devise a new strategy of prevailing over my mountainous brother.

After avoiding another swish of the insect-like leg I suddenly took notice of the hacks that were left on the lateral walls of the chamber by these very things and this lead me to an idea. Since all the blows Zephon was throwing at me now had a horizontal direction the only way to inhibit them was to lure the blow-aimed appendages into meeting these very walls on their way. Of course, after having already lost one extremity the leader of the arachnid vampires would hardly fall for nearly the same scheme again if I would try to employ it too demonstratively, so I had to find a way to somehow outsmart him. Just as Ariel had instructed me as part of her valediction before I entered Zephon's lair, 'it was my mind that was my most powerful weapon', and now it was time for me make use of that weapon.

Once another limb swung at me anew I moved out of its way, but pretended that it managed to graze me and purposely tumbled toward the right wall as if being knocked senseless.

Zephon reacted with another loud screech which this time seemed to be the one of delight and then without thinking twice chopped at me with another limb.

Having already foreseen this I rapidly bolted off, allowing the appendage dent straight into the flesh-like fundament of the wall behind me.

The limb stuck in the wall almost parallel to the ground, and as I returned to my feet I sighted that by lucky chance it turned out to be the very one I was trying to tear asunder at the beginning of this combat. The disfigured upper joint had already stopped bleeding, but the ragged pieces of muscle couldn't inosculate so soon and I understood I had to avail myself of this before it was too late.

Without protraction I took a high bounce and landed on the limb's surface with my feet, then whipped it up like a rope-walker in order to get to its injured part. Once there, I clasped my hands together in a large bony mass and fiercely hammered with them at the hardly closed joint with all the force I could muster. The bone was very solid and rigid even by vampire standards, but with almost all the muscular tissue around it torn to sheds it could not sustain a blow that hard and so the exposed joint snapped, irreparably giving way from impact.

The momentum of my desperate charge made me lose balance and fall off the limb by inertia, but I still managed to hit the ground more or less safely, while my brother just once again relapsed into anguish, starting to utter vociferous screams of pain.

Before he could regain self-control I swiftly came up to where his now broken limb plugged into the wall's crumb and tightly grappled its osseous pincer with both my arms. Then I tensed up all my muscles and rabidly yanked the appendage sideways, forcing its shattered joint to crack completely and let the lower part of the limb get torn off by me.

Once more the room's space filled with stentorious shriek of pain as I gruffly pulled out the stump of the avulsed limb out of the wall, inadvertently clawing a huge aperture in its surface, and then raised it high over my head like some sort of barbarous war trophy.

When Zephon was done sorrowing for another lost part of his body and looked at me standing before him with his detached mandible held above my head I rudely tossed it at him with ostentatious disregard. It was untypical of me to act so haughtily during the battle, for it was mostly Kain's habit of mocking his opponents in such a way, but when I saw the fear and disbelief in Zephon's eyes at the sight of his torn-off appendage being thrown at him I couldn't help experiencing some grim satisfaction from this.

"I shall tear you apart limb by limb if I have to, Zephon," I menaced him. "But I will have your soul!"

In reply to my threat the leader of the Zephonim just gave another animalistic bawl and then all of a sudden the beefy beige knob his body was planting from began to strongly inflate and deflate as if being moments away from exploding. It lasted several seconds until a wave of contraction ran all over its venous mass and something started to burst forth from the huge hole in the middle of its front side.

I narrowed my eyes in puzzlement as the knob swelled sharply and then strenuously expelled something round-shaped from its foramen. The thing that was belched out was oval and fulvous, looking almost like… an egg!

As I came to this conclusion a dreadful sense of obfuscation stung me like a burning torch as if everything I'd ever known in this life turned out to be false at one time. My once high brother, now corrupted and ruined, didn't just become disfeatured in an aesthetical meaning of this word – his degeneration defiled him to his very core, and now he even laid eggs like some insect hive queen. Deformed appearance was one thing, but this kind of hideousness was beyond any aversion.

After all, how was such madness possible anyway? The vampires I knew from my former life could not reproduce naturally – an offspring could be bred only by way of donating a portion of your own spirit to a vessel of your choice. Could it be that Zephon's evolution allowed him to overcome his innate sterility?

Before I could start analyzing other possible reasons for the nonsense I had just beheld, Zephon picked up his newly laid egg from the floor and violently threw it into me as if it was a cobblestone.

Unprepared for this sort of move I scarcely managed to sidestep, the egg crushing into the ground just a few feet away from me. The impact made it crack and burst, but nothing viable hatched out of it, which confirmed my previous assumption about my brother's inability to reproduce naturally.

But then the split eggshell suddenly gave off some strange purple gas that momentarily enshrouded my whole body in a thick cloud.

When it happened, I felt my skin becoming scorched by this gas like by some acidic exhalation, while its fetid fumes at once penetrated into my very lungs and stifled them with their suffocating grip. The miasma was so malodorous its pungent stench even made me feel sickened and the only thing to prevent me from vomiting was the absence of my digestive organs.

After a few seconds of vain struggle with the unbearable asphyxiation I feebly dropped to my knees, desperately gasping for air. In this very instant one of the two limbs that remained hanging from the ceiling came down hard on me and impaled me through the chest just the way it was done earlier before.

The last thing my fading conscience was able to perceive was the aftersound of my brother's hoarse nasal laughter accompanying me to the spectral realm as the tide of blackness once again enveloped my spirit.

* * *

"Damn it!" I slammed my left fist into the ground out of spite when I came to senses in the spirit world.

This was the second time running that Zephon gained the upper hand over me in this combat and even though the loss was not fatal for me I still felt mortified to be outrivaled by one of my weakest brethren already twice in a while. But what was even more irritating was that now I again had to bide here my time until the atmosphere of the dead world would restore my soul energy so I could transfer to the material realm. Despite the fact that I probably had to be glad I could now be present in the spectral realm without anything to put me in danger and just peacefully wait for the opportunity to enter the planar portal, every moment spent pending in this ghastly purgatorial dimension felt like the worst imprisonment possible and there was nothing I wouldn't have traded to abstain at least from another second of being here. But the choice was not mine, so I simply bowed to what was given and reluctantly returned to my feet, looking to start making for the conduit in the corner of the chamber.

Suddenly, as I stood erect, I detected some luminous glowing coming from the room's wall to the right of me. Before I even tried to scrutinize the source of this fluorescence a prior thought to deign on me was that it was very odd that such notable thing to take heed of caught my eye only now, since the first time I got drawn back to this realm I didn't discern here anything like this, while such glowing was simply too flamboyant just to be overlooked.

Bemused, I made several paces toward the spotlight area and descried that the unexpected luminescence was oozing from the aperture in the wall that was left in the material realm by the missing shot of the Zephon's limb and then accidentally widened by me when I jauntily tore off the stuck stump from the wall's carneous fabric.

As I took a look inside the aperture I found out that beyond it there was a lot of empty space of some immured section that was separated from the rest of the chamber by the screen of flesh-like substance and the bone-like pillars carrying it. And flying across this section was a couple of lost souls that illuminated its area with the otherworldy light of their comet-like bodies.

Though I probably had to feel rejoiced at hitting upon such a lucky discovery, right now there was one question that bothered me too much to let me do so – what could be preserved behind those accretions of my sibling's mutated body that these spirits were getting trapped inside them? The path to this place was barred in both dimensions and these essences could not have roamed here from any other parts of the cathedral. This implied that the corporeal vessels these souls had liberated from had to have lost their vitality inside this very lair, but when and how exactly this happened could only be learned in the physical world.

Conceiving that another mystery had just been added to my abstract list of 'not-yet-solved riddles', I lowered my clan shoulder-cape and invited all the essences behind the wall into my gaping maw.

When their vitalizing energy was converted into my own I at once sensed my spirit to be fully restored and ready for the shift to the world of the living. Then, without making a pause, I directed my paces to the burning circle of the portal behind me and once I stepped upon it I immediately centralized my whole essence into translocation to the material world.

In one volt of interspatial distortion reality arose again, and when my vision adjusted to the changed atmosphere I saw that the inanimate ethereal projection of my brother's overgrown frame in the distance had also resumed its shape and vivacity.

"Come to test me again, brother?" Zephon jested at me when I walked toward him out of the shadows. "I grow weary of your meddling."

This time I didn't reply anything. Instead I simply rushed forth headfirst. By now I had had enough of him and this prolonged skirmish, and for this once I would not let him prevail over me.

As I crossed the central part of the chamber one of the two remaining overhead limbs atrociously swung at me from the left with its pincer bent inward for a stabbing move.

Having already anticipated this kind of charge I gamboled high on the run and spun myself round full-circle with the Reaver outstretched, slicing the winging appendage in mid-air with a whirling swipe of the sword. Despite the thick bony outgrowth sheltering the limb's sharpen end it still couldn't withstand the wraith blade's attack and the hacked part of the protrusion split away from the blow, spanking down on the floor with wallop.

Zephon bellowed again the way he always did when he was overcome with pain, while I quickly took advantage of his loss of orientation and surged forth toward his very last extremity to remain hanging from the ceiling.

Before he could react to my darting swoop I took another high bounce and swung the Reaver diagonally, hewing off his last overhead limb.

Another high-pitched squeal of anguish followed thereafter and then the final severed pincer came crashing down, leaving the appendage it used to belong to a useless truncated stub.

Once I touched the ground after the jump and then briefly glimpsed about me I beheld nearly half of the room's space to be piled by the enormous stumps of the chopped and torn upper limbs lying here and there. With these four extremities finally neutralized there was nothing to prevent me from focusing my onslaught on Zephon's main body anymore, and as soon as my mind snatched at this comprehension I slowly turned my face back to my devolved brother who by that moment had already begun to recover from his agony of pain.

When my gaze met his at last I managed to discern the first signs of frustration to have been born in his sinister yellow eyes as he seemed to gradually start realizing that his perish was now inevitable. All this time Zephon must have been hoping to defeat me by not letting me defeat him and eventually get me imprisoned here inside his lair. But now that he got half of his limbs ripped off by me he must have finally come face to face with the perception that my victory over him was only a matter of time.

Yet still it was obvious that just as he refused to surrender before, he would still not do this now as well, and even after such brutal mutilation I had subjected him to my younger sibling was still not going to lose his heart that easily.

Eventually Zephon was the first to break our duel of stares by emitting another loud squeal, upon which the lower knob-like part of his bulk that appeared to be some sort of egg-sac again started pulsing spasmodically.

I already knew what was going to happen thereafter and when another egg came out of it and my monstrous brother picked it up and then snappishly hurled it into me I skewed the thrown organic vessel with authority.

As the egg went to pieces some good dozen yards away from me I took the offensive again and viciously bolted toward Zephon, intending to finally confront him toe to toe. At last this fight was about to become a close-in engagement, and this time there would be nothing to save Zephon from the wrath that I was about to unleash on him.

As the distance between us kept precipitately shortening foot by foot my mind continued to sort out all the numerous tactical decisions I could now apply in one fraction-of-a-second choice. Even without his overhead limbs to back him up Zephon still remained a venturesome foe and I had to work out in advance all the possible counterstrokes he could come up with. The two pairs of his thorax-based limbs had already proven to be just as blistering as his upper ones and with their help he could mount not less than four countercharges at a time.

In order to minimize that chance I budged to the right of him so that at least his left limbs would not be able to reach me, and then sped up for a high jump.

The trading move on the part of my brother was not long in coming and in the following instant his two right appendages lunged at me serially from different angles.

Using all the quickness I could pump out of myself I drastically dove under the first limb to whiz over my head, rolling forward a couple of feet by inertia, then curtly converted my roll into a somersault, elevating high and vaulting over the second limb that was thrown at me.

When the danger blew over I rapidly sprang sideways and planted with my feet against the bone-like pillar of the right wall, pushing off it high upwards and then taking a dab at Zephon with the Reaver in my hand swung for a hard blow. This was a sure assault, for none of my brother's limbs could catch me so high, and therefore there was nothing that could shield his arthropod-like carcass from the eviscerating contact with the wraith blade.

But then at the very last moment Zephon still managed to prove me wrong as to the faultlessness of my tactic when all out of nowhere his long scraggy neck sharply stretched in my direction and then the horn-like crest on his skull divided in half, allowing the unfolded jaws to grab me in mid-air like a steel trap.

It was only the accidental collision of the burning blade of the Reaver with his head-crest that distracted my deformed brother and prevented him from closing down his chaps on me instantly, thus saving me from being thrust out to the world of the dead for the third time. Still his long sharp teeth were successful in grazing my flesh in several places, bereaving me of the sword's manifestation and also of some serious amount of my soul energy.

As Zephon began to scream in torment from the burned maim that the Soul Reaver had inflicted on him I managed to vault out from between his lips, hanging onto his anomalously prominent chin with my right-hand talons. Perhaps it would have been safer to land on the ground instead of trying to hold onto the convulsively shaking head of the suffering spider-like beast, but I didn't want to risk another opportunity of getting that close to my brother's main body and continued to clasp hard at the prominent bony outgrowth, my whole bulk waggling back and forth from the tremble.

At some point I managed to adjust to the rabid jolting and stabbed my left-hand claws into Zephon's neck, trying to reach for his throat. Unfortunately the exoskeleton that covered most of his flesh was impressively steadfast and my claws couldn't dig through this thick layer of carapace as smoothly as could the wraith blade which I was missing right now.

Slowly Zephon became able to tolerate the pain again and when he realized that I was still clinging to his bottom jaw he craned his flexible neck and flipped it wide-range like a gigantic serpent.

The force of the harsh joggle sent me flying far to the left until my carcass stiffly went all the way through the narrow aperture in the chamber's aisle wall and I fell right into the immured section I had learned of earlier in the spectral realm.

The landing was surprisingly soft as if my body had dropped on a large haystack, but my widespread arms at once bogged down with their claws into something sticky and viscous all around me.

As I looked about me I found myself to be lying on a large heap of webbing cocoons like those I had already encountered on several occasions during my quest here. Perchance it was the main nest of the Zephonim that contained the pupating species bred directly by my brother, and when I thought so I began to quickly unstick myself from the tenacious substance that glued to my body so as not to disturb the dormant vampire larvae and cause myself even more troubles than I already had.

But then as I roughly rent off my left hand from the tissue of thread it got stuck into and inadvertently tore a huge hole in one of the hasps a strange artificial item suddenly dropped out of it, at once attracting my attention.

Amazed, I picked up the device and studied it. It was a peculiar contraption consisting of two parts – the one a pack of doubled black containers with some liquid splashing inside them and the other part a thick pipe with a trigger like that of a crossbow, also black. Both these parts were connected by a long metal hose dividing into several sections that were all set to each other at different angles.

At the first glance the device seemed inscrutable to me, but as my mind delved through the fragments of memories of my former vampire life I started to recall some wars of conquest I conducted under the aegis of Kain during his final crusade against humanity. Back then our human adversaries used a cruder model of the nearly same device which they themselves called a 'flamethrower'. Despite the unspectacular external view it could be a devastatingly dangerous weapon if used properly – the flammable gasses were sent by a piston through the hose held by the operator, who then by using a match or a torch ignited them into ruinous spurts of flame that incinerated any unlucky being to get within its range.

The device I was examining now, however, appeared to be a bit more adapted version of its predecessor – the gasses were set alight automatically by pulling the trigger that probably activated some internal igniting mechanism. Anyway, this find was, indeed, a great fortune, and if the weapon was still effective then I could really find some valuable application for it in my battle.

After I stopped studying the flamethrower the emphasis of my concern shifted to another issue. If this weapon dropped out of one of these webbing hasps then it couldn't be the pupating ghouls that were wrapped inside them as I presumed earlier.

With this idea awaken in my mind I turned over the hank of thread the incinerating device fell out of and then saw a part of a human face showing through a small trench on its upper part. The entangled mortal's skin was pale and livid; his eyes closed tightly either due to unconsciousness or death. The spectacle was similar to the one I viewed when I chanced upon the trapped vampire hunter Moldgar that was captured in the equally same fashion by one of the Zephonim predators.

To maintain the experimental integrity I looked over some other cocoons around me and the result of the examination was always the same – ensnared in all these hasps were humans, most likely the vampire hunters from Bolgor's squadron that must have invaded the cathedral some time ago. So it was here that all the trapped victims were taken to. Apparently Zephon as the leader was the only one to enjoy the privilege of feasting on blood of the clan's preys, while his descendants had to make do with the stockpiled blood their human worshippers prepared for them.

But this malpractice was about to come to its completion, for I still remembered about the promise I first made to Moldgar, and then to Bolgor, Ansek and Zolyn. I would rescue all of these captives that were still alive and put an end to my sibling's selfish gluttony.

In the meantime, my corrupted brother began to grow impatient and called to me with his snuffling piping voice that rang from the other wing of the chamber,

"Come out of there and fight me, Raziel! Don't be a coward at least for once!"

With his body adhered to the edifice's fundament and all his overhead limbs sheared off Zephon was unable to reach me here, so all he could do was to instigate me with his insults to face him in a close encounter.

And I had no problem doing so, but first I had to work out a plan.

A flamethrower was a strong trump-card, indeed, but it could only be used effectively at a short distance, and it was very unlikely that Zephon would allow me to slip unhurt past his defense for the second time, let alone with such a weapon in my hands. Moreover, it was a risk of getting the device destroyed in the full swing of the skirmish and therefore hitting another dead-end in the search for a means of prevailing over my sibling. If only there had been a way to increase the range of those flammable gasses that the weapon spewed…

Wait a minute… Gasses… Of course!

Once I repeated the word 'gasses' to myself I instantly recalled my unpleasant experience with the first egg that Zephon threw into me. When the eggs that he laid cracked from hard impact they emitted some poisonous gas that could even burn matter with its toxic fumes. Whatever was that substance this gas contained perhaps it could also be suitable for being ignited by fire just like that combusting liquid the flamethrower operated on. If so, then right now I needed my brother to toss another of those eggs into me.

And to make him do that, I had to provoke him just the way he was trying to provoke me now.

Wasting no time I gnawed through the aperture in the wall back into the chamber, purposely leaving the flamethrower lay inside the hidden space so that Zephon would not suspect anything.

Once I was in the main part of the room again, I stood in the very middle of it and turned to face the devolved leader of the Zephonim clan, my posture relaxed and my head lifted up high. Then I addressed myself to him,

"You want to talk about cowardice, Zephon?" I asked him with contempt in return to his previous oration. "You, the one who cowered yourself in the most apex of this derelict building only to be beyond any intruder's reach? You, the one who converted a bunch of delusional imbecile mortals to serve you and then sent them to kill me? Were you so scared of confronting me again after so many eons that you had to do all this?"

The yellow pupilless eyes of the vampire titan seemed to inflame at these incitements as his nostrils started to inhale and exhale in a violent temper.

"I'm not scared of anything, you vile wormling!" he screamed hoarsely. "I am the largest vampire to have ever existed! I am the strongest of all the clan leaders! I am…"

"You are pathetic." I interrupted him irreverently. "You always were and you still are now."

Finally Zephon's lips distorted into a wrung line of overfilling anger and he snapped, letting out an insane shriek of rage. Upon that outburst of fury his egg-sac began to spasm again until another egg squeezed its way out of it and the rampant leader of the Zephonim clan cast it into me with almost demented aggressiveness.

But this time I didn't try to dodge the thrown egg. Instead I jumped straight toward it and attempted to catch it on the fly. The arm-power of the throw, however, was too great to be stopped in mid-air that easy and the egg forcefully nailed me to the ground with all its bulky mass. Thankfully I still managed to tackle it with my arms and save it from the hard impact with the ground.

When it became clear that the egg didn't crack anywhere I laid it aside and trippingly made my way back to the slot in the left wall. Zephon responded to my movement with a puzzled harrumph, but once I exited the immured part of the chamber with a flamethrower in my hands the tone of his harrumphing at once changed to a more fearful one.

With the firewater-filled canisters held in one hand and the nozzle of the igniter held in the other one I approached the egg and aimed at it with the weapon. Then I pulled the trigger and the flamethrower burst forth a tongue of flame that washed all over the egg.

The organic vessel was set ablaze, but didn't explode, and when I realized that so far my precarious scheme was still working I slang the flamethrower over my shoulder and hurried to pick up the burning egg.

After I grabbed it with my clawed roughen hands and held it in front of me, I turned around and broke into a run back to the middle of the chamber.

Zephon watched my manipulations with a silent inapprehension on his eerie face as if surmising I was up to some mischief but not yet able to fathom which one exactly it was. But once I stopped in my tracks in the center of the room, far enough from the reach of his limbs but close enough for a precise throw, then swung the flaming egg over my head the intentions of mine must have finally become clear to him.

With a springing motion of my arms I mightily hurled the burning egg into my brother's vast frame like a catapult firing an alight projectile.

Zephon didn't rest on oars as well and swiftly shot forth one of his limbs, looking to crush the egg in mid-air before it would reach his body.

But he had no idea that it was the very mistake I was expecting him to make.

The moment the appendage's scalloped pincer tore through the shell of the egg the same venomous purple gas that had cankered me earlier before erupted from it, merging with the surrounding flames and mushrooming out into one colossal explosion – colossal enough to enwrap nearly the entire Zephon's oversized body.

In one gigantic flash of fire the whole vertical base of my younger brother was set ablaze, the flame torrentially overrunning his spinal column, his thorax, his limbs, the bony frills growing from out of his back and eventually his large crested head.

The screams of agony Zephon began to splutter with could not even be compared to the ones he had heaved previously during our strife, and now his very breath seemed to be engulfed by fire. His blazing carcass started frantically wriggling right and left as if trying to abandon that egg-sac that was holding it riveted stationary to the cathedral's fundament, but it couldn't.

There was nowhere for Zephon to hide anymore.

His death was coming, and he knew it.

For some moment I watched the torment of my own relative with some acute sick fascination, but then I woke out of this trance and came nearer to his flaring stature.

As I made sure that Zephon could see me standing before him even despite the delirious pangs of anguish, I took the flamethrower from my shoulder and addressed the very last statement to my dying brother,

"Your body betrays you, Zephon. You cannot run away. Now I shall make your home, your very tomb."

With these words I pulled the weapon's trigger again, sending a maelstrom of fire right into my brother's egg-sac. The flame immediately ran through its meaty mass and the thick veins across its surface started to burst with some strangled hissing sound.

When the fire penetrated into the very foramen of the egg-sac, it probably caused the remaining eggs inside it to detonate with that poisonous explosive gas that filled them, and in the following instant the entire lower body of Zephon just blew up in an abundant gory eruption of burned flesh, blood, slime and worse.

The explosion forced the thin spinal column that connected my brother's upper body with his egg-sac to crack and give way, and when it happened Zephon wreaked from his burning throat his very last cry of suffering and despair,

"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo o!"

Thereupon his fiery upper body began to crustily lean forward with a loud menacing rustle and I comprehended that I had to urgently move out of its way.

Dropping the flamethrower on the ground, I hastily span round and leapt off from where I stood, letting the stem-broken frame of my brother fall down with wallop like a hacked-down tree.

The impact from the slamming tumble made the entire chamber's fundament quake with shuddering thud that almost knocked me off my feet after my gambol.

Somehow I kept my legs under me and then as I looked backwards I saw Zephon's behemoth body lying on the floor face-plant, his former solid exoskeleton that used to shelter his flesh now gradually turning to charred dust.

The monster that was my brother was slain at last and just as it was before with Melchiah the sight of him slowly passing away from this life before my own eyes and at my own hands felt as quenching to my thirst for revenge as it was grieving to my heart of a sibling…


	12. Chapter 12: Loose Ends

**Author's note: **_Sorry that I started updating less often than I used to, fellas - I'm just literally swamped with work right now. Big thanks to everyone reading and reviewing my story - I'm extremely grateful to all of you for this! Thanks to you this month my fic has received its 1000th view, which I believe is quite an anniversary) Please, keep those reviews coming, cuz all your opinions always help me a lot! As for me, I'll try to come up with the next chapter as soon as possible without keeping my regular readers waiting for it too long)_

_Thank you for your kind attention, and now back to the story,_

* * *

**Loose Ends**

Slowly the flame that covered Zephon's titanic body began to abate and then some new elemental power came to replace the subsiding fire. One by one numerous energy flocks started crawling their way from within the cindering flesh like a thousand lightning bugs gathering into one swarm. First one flock, then another, then another, then another, until they all coalesced into one big spark of spiritual light with a tail like that of a comet. It was the released soul of my second brother, and just like the soul of Melchiah it looked different than the essences of ordinary vampires: its luminous reflection was of a greater size and its body was filled with some bright red radiance almost similar to the one of the fire that was now reducing my brother's corpse to ashes.

The unbound spirit was restlessly crinkling through the air, panicking at its so sudden liberation from the corporeal vessel it used to inhabit. It did not yet know what to do with that unexpected freedom, but I did. So I lowered my cowl and drained the soul down into the cavernous hole in my chest, feeling as almost every nerve of mine began to pulsate in response to the stream of new energy enriching me.

Just like before when I devoured the soul of my youngest brother the absorption of this essence elevated my body high into the air, sending bolts of power through my every joint that felt like a stroke of a lightning. Every ounce of my spirit started becoming fully rejuvenated with the reserves of my soul energy increasing to the new limits I did not know I could have.

But then the influx of power suddenly began to have a direct effect on my physical body and all out of the blue I started to feel parts of me… changing. There was something unfriendly and because of that frightening about this feeling, as if parts of my carcass were being forced into some alterations it was not originally meant for.

Once the soul's possession released me I collapsed to the ground, devilishly fighting my own frame to assimilate the unknown transformations. Inch by inch my body began to regain its definition, until there were only my hands left that were still rocked by some alien sensation.

When I glimpsed at them in awe I saw that they were morphing into something else: the talons were becoming thicker and longer, the corneal layer covering them getting even more coarsen than it already was. Then a hundred tiniest jagged spikes started thrusting through their shell, bestrewing them with a barely palpable halo of stinging thorns like that of a nettle plant. It was almost as if my claws were now in a state of some accelerated growth and whatever ability I had gained by drinking Zephon's soul it now seemed to be making them evolve just the way they used to when I was still a vampire, only now it was happening in a matter of seconds.

As I began to examine my morphed hands the vaults of my conscience were suddenly struck by a booming rush of telepathic echo calling to me. But this time it was not the beneficial and sweet-tempered voice of Ariel that I would have loved to hear now – this voice was dark and unwelcome, but painfully familiar nonetheless, for it belonged to no other than my ancient restorer who referred to himself as the Elder God.

"Consuming Zephon's apostate soul has bestowed on you a new gift." he spoke to me. "Like his vampire spawn, you are able to scale certain walls which are otherwise impassable - but only in the physical realm. In the spirit world, these insubstantial edifices will not support you."

Just as always my benefactor decided to contact me right after my gaining a new power, when all the heavy odds and excruciating fights that preceded this moment were already over and his educating comments were little but unnecessary. This was not new of him, though, so I reacted to his emerging with a rational degree of irony.

"Oh, it's you again…" I alleged caustically. "What is it that made you so suddenly deign me with your presence?"

"You have destroyed another one of you brethren and made further progress in your quest, so I congratulate you on this." the Elder God replied in an unstirred tone. "But now there's a new purpose that awaits you, Raziel, and it is my duty as your Master to guide your next steps."

"Your duty?!" I asked, irritated. "It didn't feel like that when you abandoned me in this pandemonium without giving any faintest instructions or hints as to what sort of hardships I would have to meet with here!"

"And yet you managed to cope with all of them and even emerge stronger that you were before." my protector returned as if trying to deliver some profound idea to me.

"No thanks to you, I did." I answered back, refusing to see any underlying meaning in his allusions. "And that's exactly what makes me question the reason you still keep on so periodically showing some signs of concern about me if I meet all my challenges so well on my own. What is it that you're trying to control this way?"

The response to this question of mine was the usual laugh of amusement.

"You think that you've grown completely independent because you prevailed over some of your brothers and uncovered a couple of secrets by yourself, Raziel, but you have no idea what mysteries still lie on your path." the ancient being proceeded then. "Although you've already proven yourself to be an efficient herald, without my assistance you will never even get close to any of the revelations that are laid in store for you. Not even Ariel you hold so dear to your heart will be of any service to you in this."

This last tirade sent a slight throb of chilling sensation down my spine. Just as I suspected before the Elder God was aware of all my communications with Ariel and the guidance she had offered me during my travel here. And given the way he was referring to my tender attitude to her, there seemed that my protector was abreast of not only our conversations, but even of our thoughts as well, at least of mine in particular. Evidently I had really been underestimating the tightness of his control over me this entire time, and now it appeared that there was not a single thing I could possibly hide from his all-seeing eye, not even within the confines of my mind. And if that assumption of mine was correct, then it was pointless to even think about trying to elicit from my ancient benefactor some of his true intents, so all I could do for now was submit and simply follow his directions.

"Well, since you do not grant your aid very often I would probably be a fool not to take such a rare opportunity." I spoke with mocking derision.

"Now that is another talk, my angel of death." the Elder God replied in an approving manner, but then quickly changed to a more orderly tone, "Just do not forget that it is not for you to decide when and if to accept my aid, Raziel."

I swallowed that taunt without arguing, seeing little sense in trying to conduct another dispute between me and my ancient benefactor. If he could truly read my thoughts the way I surmised of him then he most likely knew my genuine mood even without my having to express it.

"What should I do next?" I finally asked, proceeding to action.

"To begin with, leave this godforsaken derelict edifice." the ancient being instructed me. "Once you find your way out of it, I will beacon you your following destination point."

After this line the Elder God's voice lapsed into silence, dissipating from within my mind like mist rolled away by stiff breeze. I was glad this dialogue ended quickly, for the conversations with my protector usually left me in a condition of disgust and disappointment, and the longer they lasted the more intense that condition was.

As the state of telepathic contact stopped keeping my concentration busy I refocused on surveying the changes that happened to me as a result of devouring Zephon's spirit. Since my right hand had already become occupied with the restored projection of the Soul Reaver, the sole proper object of study I was left with was my left palm which I began to slowly turn over back and forth, admiring its newly enlarged tridactyl talons.

Then I flexed the claws a couple of times, accustoming myself to the fresh sensation of their morphed bony structure. The Elder God said that with the ingestion of my second brother's soul I could now scale up vertical surfaces just like his descendants, which appeared to be the primary reason for these physical transformations that occurred to me. Still there seemed that I had received a slightly weaker version of the Zephonim's skill, for the children of my sibling could cling to walls and ceilings with all their extremities, while I could do this only with my hands. Nevertheless it was, indeed, a useful gaining and when I would master this ability it would most probably serve me well.

Once I was done examining my left hand I again glimpsed at the corpse of Zephon still smoldering in the distance ahead of me. The flame had scorched away all of his flesh, but some parts of his carapace miraculously remained whole, even though charred to impenetrable blackness. It was odd, for after the loss of their corrupted souls the vampire cadavers usually turned to ashes at once, let alone when destroyed by way of incineration. The remnants of my brother's spider-like exoskeleton, however, were still present here, including the head-crest, almost the entire thorax and spinal column and also some separate osseous fragments of limbs. Perchance it was another consequence of his former body having imbedded into the cathedral's fundament, and after so many eons of this weird symbiosis the edifice was refusing to fully release its hold of Zephon's body even after his demise.

For moments I stood dead and stared at what was left of my brother's gargantuan body which now looked more like a colossal burned fossil. The devourment of his soul and the sudden appearance of my ancient protector straight after that had distracted me from any cogitation that usually followed such moments, but now that there was nothing to claim my attention anymore all the relentless thoughts and reflections had finally consumed me.

Another act of fratricide had just been committed by me, and as I began to dwell on this perception I could most palpably sense how the weight of guilt on my soul began to grow even heavier than it already was. Even though it didn't feel as shocking as the previous time when I murdered my first brother Melchiah, I still couldn't shake the frightening sense that with every atrocity I kept carrying out against my brethren I was slowly becoming someone else… or _something_ else. It was not that I regretted killing any of them, no – murdering my brothers for their betrayal was exactly what I wanted to do and I always did that intentionally and with a cold heart of a merciless assassin. But every time I would quench a part of my desire for retaliation by taking vengeance on another one of my siblings I could feel that quenched part inside me to be replaced with nothing but emptiness – a gap that I knew I would never ever be filled again.

At some point I managed to shake myself free of all these contemplations and centralized the focus of my concern on more practical issues, namely how I would exit Zephon's lair. The circular entrance to the chamber was still imperviously closed with that thick membrane of my brother's sprawling flesh, and even after his demise it still didn't dehisce to clear the way.

The situation looked to be a dead-end on the face of it, but then I glimpsed at my left palm again and supposed that maybe my new improved talons could help me here.

Eager to check my theory I approached the skinned passage-way and slashed at its webbed surface with my left arm. The ease with which my morphed claws tore through the firm elastic fabric was remarkable and so I continued to lacerate the membrane with their aid, avidly gnawing my way out of this place. Had I had such advanced appendages during my battle with Zephon I would have probably been able to rip off his limbs even without the help of the Reaver, and now as I kept avulsing huge rags of carneous tissue with them I wondered if they would fit equally well for trenching through the tough armor the Dumahim vampires were enchained in.

But like almost every Dark Gift, this one was not without drawbacks: the manifold corpuscular spikes that my talons got overgrown with constantly made them get stuck in the meaty substance they plunged into much like Zephon's ceiling-based limbs he was attacking me with. Apparently it was the sequence of that 'clinging ability' the claws were endowed with, and from this onward it would always take a bit more effort to pull them out of whatever fabric they would be forced into. I would have to keep that in mind for the future combats and thus use them warily when fighting barehanded.

Soon the membranous curtain was breached through and I could leave this place at last. But before crossing the threshold I remembered about the trapped humans I had found here and caught myself thinking that I had no idea what to do with them now. I promised Bolgor and his brothers that I would save their captive fellows if I found them here, but considering the state these mortals were in now I was not sure what exactly constituted 'saving them'. Disentangling them from the thread they were enwrapped in was as pointless as it could be dangerous – all these warriors were most likely wounded and as I had learned from the experience I had had with Moldgar the Zephonim's web that held the captives tied could serve as a sort of bandage to prevent them from bleeding to death. Carrying them away from here was simply impossible, and even if it hadn't been so, it would still hardly do any good to them – they all required healing treatment now, and this contaminated cloister could not offer them any.

It appeared that so far destroying the leader of the Zephonim clan was the very most I could have done for the safety of these mortals, and now all that was left for me was to return to Bolgor, Zolyn and Ansek and inform them of their comrades' current location. Unless only they were not dead by now…

With a confusing feeling of uncertainty I finally walked out of the chamber back into the corridor that had brought me here. Now it was time for me to find the return path to the lower tier, and to do that I would again have to pass the entire maze of tunnels on this floor that Ariel formerly guided me through. The spirit of the former Balance Guardian was silent now, but after the last conversation I had had with her I now knew that her silence was more than just well-grounded, and if she could have had the opportunity to contact me she would have already done that.

As for me, I was on my own again and therefore could rely only on my own memory of the trek and my intuition. I only hoped this would not take long, for the more time I would spend straying through these labyrinths, the lesser would be my chances to find Bolgor and his brothers to be still alive.

* * *

Crossing one annex after another I ran through the tenebrous serpentine corridors which fundament seemed to be mantled in spider's web almost to the very last brick. My feet again started poaching into the layer of thread on the ground, and although I only needed to shift to the spectral realm to avoid this effect, I purposely didn't do so. After spending so much time there during my battle with Zephon I got so much sick and tired of this place I'd rather have coped with this petty discomfort than returned to this world again without real necessity.

The recollection of all the twisting routes I kept taking did not always come easy to me, and a couple of times I had a feeling I was about to lose my way. But once I stumbled upon several cracked webbing cocoons hanging attached to the walls I realized that the trek had brought me to the Zephonim's nest I discovered some time ago, which meant that so far I was going in the right direction.

So I continued to move on until I suddenly came across a number of corpses of the Zephonim ghouls lying on the ground, their gaunt bodies turned upside down and limbs doubled up in frozen crookness of agony. The further I paced, the more cadavers I kept meeting in the way, all of them lying in nearly similar poses, but with all their body parts remaining surprisingly unscathed.

As I approached the nearest one I at once noted the numerous bloodstains covering the dead creature's head where its eyes, nose and ear-holes were. I had already seen such trails of blood before and knew that they could mean only one thing – all these vampires here had been destroyed by the power of sound.

The moment I arrived at this conclusion I took notice of another thing that I should have probably paid heed to ever since having left Zephon's lair – it was perfectly quiet around. When I first ascended this tier and started to seek out my brother's retreat the entire space of the cathedral was getting filled with the humming noise of the pipes that was created as a result of Bolgor's having activated their mechanism. And before I retreated to the spirit world I had sensed then that that hum was slowly, but steadily becoming more and more intense. Could it have grown so loud at some point that it sufficed to eliminate all these ghouls? And if so, why did the sound cease now?

Wasting no more time on the examination of the Zephonim's dead bodies I proceeded to walk my path, uncomfortably stepping over the dystrophic arthropod corpses on the floor every now and then. This part of the trek was better imprinted on my mind than the earlier one and soon I was able to begin making headway at a much quicker pace.

Over time I reached the end of the passage and came to the vertical tunnel through which I had elevated on this tier earlier before. The updraft that had provided me with the ascent was already gone just like the 'hymn' sounding from the organs, and now it appeared that I could descend to the lower lever by gliding down there on my wings.

With this end in view I slightly scratched at my flesh with my left-hand talons, liberating my right palm from the inextricable hold of the wraith blade. Once both my hands became free I took hold of the shreds of membrane on my back and jumped into the tunnel's space.

My stretched-out wings at once met the air resistance and then slowed my steep downfall to a flowing hover as I began to smoothly soar down the tunnel like a leaf falling off a tree.

Unlike the rapid ascension on the channeled airflow that managed to bring me to the topmost tier of the cathedral in a matter of seconds the slow downward gliding took me much more time to attain my current goal. The smooth hovering descent could have felt almost comfortable if it had not been for the smarting decay of the matter around my spiritual body that reemerged after I rid of the Reaver's projection. My soul hunger also awoke anew and started troubling me with fresh vigor as if my consummation of Zephon's soul not long ago never even happened. I wondered if the opportunity to sate it on the material plane would present itself in the near future, for if those dead Zephonim I had hit upon earlier were slain by the noise of the sounding organs then the very same fate could have been shared by the rest of the vampires residing in this edifice.

Eventually the tunnel began to reach its end and when the lower tier's space started showing beneath me I fathomed it was time to make use of my newly acquired gift. So I released the grip of my wings and clutched at one of the walls around me with my augmented claws. The thick furrowed talons dug into the solid bricked fundament with authority, allowing me to cling firmly to its vertical surface. I was amazed at the claws' penetrating ability as they stuck in the brickwork so steadily that even the violent momentum of my jump couldn't budge me off the spot I adhered to. If I had attempted the same with my old claws they would have only managed to leave some scratches on this wall at best.

Then I tried to clamber down the rest of the wall by forcing one hand after another into the fundament, which turned out to be more difficult than just clinging to surfaces. As I had already noticed before my changed talons lodged too tightly into any material I sank them into and the effort it took to extract them from there made my moves a bit clumsy. I would certainly need some time and practice to perfect this new skill of mine.

Little by little I climbed down to the verge of the vertical tunnel until my whole husk just began to hang loose from it. From this point I finally managed to observe the area of the tier below and the sight that met my eyes was one of the most grotesque I could have imagined. The circular uplifting track leading to the chamber with the mechanism was literally drowned in pools of blood which were thickly flowing from the platform all the way down the walls. Multiple dead bodies of the Zephonim lay everywhere, their heads and limbs separated from torsos with pieces of carved flesh barely hanging on the bones. Though I couldn't have seen the way this platform looked from outside when I was leaving it, it clearly was not as blooded and gored back then as it was now, which indicated that Bolgor, Zolyn and Ansek had indeed gone through a very hard-fought battle here after my departure.

Looking to land on the track I started to sway my body back and forth before brusquely yanking my hands out of the wall I was holding onto and letting the momentum carry me forward. Thereupon I spread my broken wings and glided the rest of the distance right to the bottom of the platform I was after.

The not-yet-completely caked blood on the floor almost made me slip when I touched the surface of the track, but somehow I managed to retain the balance and then hastened to continue my way up to the chamber's doorway.

As I came nigh to it I saw that the traces of massacre reached the room's space as well, suggesting that the Zephonim must have still been able to invade it after I left.

I stepped in and then beheld nearly the same spectacle that reigned outside the chamber: mutilated cadavers of the arachnid vampires lying all over the place, almost drowning in large puddles of their own sanguinary. The gear-work of the mechanism was also damaged, but not too hard, just several triggers broken and a couple of its details scattered about in front of it. Yet the mechanism was no longer running and rotating the way it was when Bolgor managed to activate it, so perhaps even such seemingly narrow damage was critical enough to hinder its operation.

And then finally my gaze shifted to the side of the distant corner of the chamber and I saw all three hunters I was searching for couched there in recumbent postures. Even from a distance I could discern that this time not only Ansek, but Bolgor and Zolyn as well were wounded, so I hurried to approach them and check how bad their condition really was.

None of the mortals showed even a slightest sign of consciousness in response to my approximation and for an instant I got a terrible feeling that I was already too late.

Tensed with uneasiness, I hunched over the body of one of the crossbowmen that lay the nearest to me and studied his injuries in a closer look. His black plate armor was dented all over and missed several huge pieces, including the one in the area of his chest that exposed a broad avulsed wound. He was also missing his right shoulder strap with his shoulder being injured too, and there was a part of his greave that was breached through, blood issuing slightly from the gash. The wounds were not too deep even by human standards, probably thanks to the armor, but without proper bandaging they could sooner or later cause serious hemorrhage and maybe even death.

After having finished examining the wounding of the first arbalester I turned my attention to the second one that was lying couched against the wall. But when I tried to touch him to study his injuries his body just flaccidly collapsed to the floor like an overturned vase with his black helmet falling off his head. This was the first time ever I got to see the face of one of these two crossbowmen, but the condition I found reflected in it made me wish it had rather never happened. The mortal's red hair was all greasy from dried sweat, while his newly exposed face was wanly bluish, deprived of any signs of life. His blue eyes were open wide, but the look in them was glassy and unfocused, frozenly fastened into nowhere.

Before I came to the only terrible conclusion that this sight suggested I suddenly took notice of the punctured part of the human's armor in the area of his thigh with fresh spot of blood stained around it. Only now I comprehended that this crossbowman was the one with the name Ansek that got injured when the hunters took position around one of the two cathedral's bells that were used by us to break out path to the mechanism. Given how much time had already passed since that moment and how the crossbowman had to spend it with his wound constantly remaining open and unstrapped there could be no more reservations left as to his condition – Ansek was dead.

As this terrifying realization dawned upon me I discomposedly turned my gaze away, trying to suppress the ember of frustration that started kindling within me. I sure did expect such solemn outcome, but now that I was brought face to face with it I just couldn't make myself accept it. First Moldgar, and now Ansek… Could I save none of the humans that had supported me here during my quest?

Before the vortex of self-reproach and regret had completely sucked me down I remembered that there was still the leader of the squadron left unchecked, so I turned my attention to him, at the same time trying to take my mind off the fact that Ansek was no more. Bolgor was lying flat on the bricked fundament just like his comrades, his face pale and lifeless and his bluish eyelids closed under the weight of emaciation. His nostrils, however, still moved scarcely with faint breathing and once I noted this I understood that mercifully he was still alive.

Upon this illation I laid my palm on his good shoulder in a gentle but steady manner, hoping that the sensation of my touch would wake him out of his unconsciousness. When this didn't work I weakly slapped him across his face several times until finally two tiny lines parted his eyes and his pupils feebly stared at me from between them. Usually Bolgor's reaction to my apparitions was the one of barefaced astonishment, but now that the leader of the hunters' squadron was so badly maimed and prostrated he just barely cast at me an absent languid glance as if I was the most ordinary creature to rise to his view.

"R-Raziel…" he croaked with an obvious effort. "You're alive…"

I couldn't help but chuckle at the back of my mind at his calling me 'alive'. Since I was a living dead wraith the only accurate word for me might have rather been 'undestroyed'.

"The leader of the vampires that reside here is defeated." I told him. "Now your people can reclaim the cathedral from its invaders."

Bolgor gulped hard at this line, but I could still descry a new-born ray of relief to have illuminated his dehematized face. The idea of lastly gaining a chance to retrieve their weapon of destruction from the paws of the very ones that weapon was meant to annihilate for sure had to feel like a flattering unction to his soul. Of course, it would take the mortals decades, perhaps centuries to restore everything here once they would reoccupy the edifice, but it would still grant them hope… hope for victory in their age-long war against their vampire oppressors.

"Wh-what about our brothers?" he asked then, straining with every word he uttered. "Did you manage to save them?"

"They're safe now." I replied, trying to sound as earnest as possible.

I was not completely honest with him, of course. I might have saved his captive fellows from becoming meal for my brother, but I could neither set them free, nor take them to any other premise of the cathedral. I was intending to tell Bolgor and his brothers about it, but in their present condition I strongly doubted that such information would do them any good. Now one could only pray that those trapped humans on the topmost tier could hold on in their comatose state for some more time until the reinforcements of the Human Citadel would arrive here and find the way to reach the pinnacle of the edifice.

After my reassuring tirade Bolgor closed his eyes again and took several breaths with his mouth, the corners of his lips forming a weak semblance of a smile.

"Thank you… Thank you so much, Raziel…" he murmured. "You truly are a God… I'm proud to die knowing that I had the honor of fighting alongside you…"

As the leader of the hunters' squadron told me this I sensed an unendurable mixture of shame and guilt start swelling in my every joint. I knew I deserved none of his praises and gratitude, for I failed to save him and his brothers, and, what was even worse, failed to keep the promise I first made to Moldgar and then to these three hunters. These humans believed me to be a God, but now that I was watching them slowly die before my own eyes, being unable to do anything about it, I felt nowhere near like a God – I felt helpless… simply helpless.

For moments I continued to silently kneel beside Bolgor, not knowing what to do or say right now. The leader of the hunters' squadron seemed to have started to sink in his swamp of faintness again, and the more I kept staring at his colorless insipid face the more I hated myself for my own feebleness. Two of these three hunters were not dead yet, which meant that there had to be a chance to save them. But each and every moment my mind would try to calculate any possible solution to this problem I realized I could simply see no way of using that chance. When I had to abandon those trapped mortals in Zephon's lair I had no other choice but to do so. And now I did have a choice, but had no foggiest idea of how to dispose of it, and this dilemma was torturing me none the worse. What kind of aid could possibly be offered inside this dishallowed edifice? Was there anything – _anything_ – that could help these humans survive?

Humans…

As I suddenly pondered into this word I remembered that the vampires were not the only beings inhabiting the cathedral. There were also those human worshippers that somehow were able to reside here side by side with the Zephonim ghouls. After having dispatched their so-called 'Brotherhood' I even discovered one of their lairs here, but back then I made only a brief investigation of it and failed to find any means of healing treatment there. But if there were humans living in it, they just had to have some bandages or healing potions there. After all, how could they do any battles or training without having those in store? The worshippers might have had some portion of vampire power, but I had learned first-hand that their bodies still retained the frailty of mortal flesh and whatever wounding these treacherous religionists could have received it couldn't just regenerate like that of the vampires. This could mean only one thing: if this desecrated edifice could possibly lend any aid, then it had to be there to be searched for.

At last I knew what I had to do now. The worshippers' lair was located on this very tier, and after having walked through it no less than four times I perfectly remembered the way to this premise.

With this awareness I grabbed Bolgor's body by the waist and lifted him over my right shoulder. Then I picked up the body of Zolyn and flung it over my left shoulder in the same manner. I had absolutely no certainty that what I was going to do now would be crowned with success and even if it would make any sense at all. I didn't even know what I would do next if my suspicion about the lair would prove to be incorrect. I couldn't care less right now. I also didn't care if I would lose precious time on this or if my actions would irritate the Elder God and he would refuse to guide me to my next goal objective. Right now I had a choice, and I chose to attempt at least something, regardless of whether my efforts would turn out to be futile or not.

* * *

The next several minutes were spent by me rapidly scurrying through the tier's corridors with the bodies of two hunters hanging on both my shoulders. This repetitive act of carrying the carcasses of unconscious mortals from one part of the cathedral to another like some bearer was already beginning to grow odd, but for now I was too focused on my primary purpose to give way to this. It might have been too late for Ansek, but if it was not the same with Bolgor and Zolyn, then I had to do my very utmost to make at least their survival possible.

The configuration of the passage-ways on this floor was much simpler than the one on the topmost level of the edifice, so very soon I was already standing at the entry to the worshippers' lair.

I quickly crossed the large arena-like hall where my combat with the 'Brothers of Darkness' took place, then came to grips with the door leading to the living area of the place.

After carefully putting down the bodies of Bolgor and Zolyn on the ground I opened the door and made an instinctive step inside, as always preliminarily observing the space of the room before entering it completely.

That habit of mine proved to be helpful again, for when my glance shifted to the side of the two-tired beds bulked in the far side of the chamber much to my surprise I found a red-robed vampire worshipper resting on one of those.

His reaction to my entrance was a bit slow in coming, but once he noticed my presence he fearfully flitted with his whole figure, almost hitting the upper bunk above him with his head.

In the following second the mortal hectically grabbed a spear out of the nearby container filled with different weapons and lunged at me headlong. His choice of weapon, though, seemed to be rather spontaneous since he was not even holding it right, so I easily caught the spear with both hands when he tried to thrust it into me.

Seeing that his attack failed, the worshipper promptly relinquished his grip of the spear and made reach for the crooked dagger that hung attached to his golden belt. Before he was able to unsheathe the blade I pivoted on my feet and struck him with the spear's shaft right across the mid-section, sending him flying into one of the chamber's shelf blocks occupied by the bottles with stored blood.

Several shelves broke in half from impact with all the glass vessels that used to clutter them shattering to pieces and spilling their crimson content all over the floor. The collision nearly stunned the human religionist, but he still refused to give in and attempted to return to his feet.

Having no time and desire to continue this useless brawl I dropped the spear on the ground and grabbed the worshipper with my right hand by the front side of his robe, lifting him high above the ground. The masked mortal tried to fling with his arms and legs to break free, but his efforts were in vain, and in the next instant my left arm was already swung at him for a deathblow.

But before I threw forth my talons to separate his head from his body my eyes suddenly picked up on one interesting feature about this worshipper's appearance that I didn't notice until this moment. His right shoulder was thickly bound up by some ragged white cloths with dark spots of blood distinctly showing through their fabric. Though the feature itself was trivial there was something about it that greatly stirred my mind and as I began to sort out the most recent memories of my journey here I realized what made me feel this way.

This occultist was the very one I injured during my confrontation with another sect of vampire worshippers near the local church-bell. Back then I destroyed all his partners and was about to do the same to him, but with the use of my distraction he managed to escape from me. It appeared that right after that this mortal retreated to this place and since then constantly remained here nursing his wound and recovering his strengths. But was what even more important was that this proved that there truly were some means of healing treatment here and therefore my idea to invade this lair in search for aid was not unfruitful after all.

Feeling a combination of complacence and hope illuminate my spirit I put the worshipper back on the ground then grabbed him by the throat with my left hand and roughly pinned his body against the wall behind him. The red-robed human started bitterly gasping for air, snatching at my hand in an attempt to ease the grip, but then I put my right palm on his bandaged shoulder with the point of my thumb-talon strongly pressed against his wound, which at once made him hold still.

When he stopped wriggling at last I addressed myself to him,

"The bandage – where did you get it?" I asked him in a threatening tone. "Answer me, now!"

The masked mortal made no reply, his scared eyes though continuing to nervously stare at me through the trenches in his iron mask. Formerly I would have believed that these religionists simply didn't understand my speech, but after having a battle with one of their sects where the leader spoke the same language I did and his brethren perfectly understood every word of his I wouldn't buy into this anymore.

"Don't pretend that you do not understand – I know you do." I hissed at him and pressed my talon into his maimed shoulder a bit harder.

The worshipper yawped lamentably, but again spoke nothing in return. His silence was already beginning to irritate me and for a moment I seriously thought of stabbing my claw into his flesh completely and opening his wound anew. But then I remembered that for now the information was too vital just to be yielded to some impatient bursts of rage, so I quickly calmed my temper and decided to consider some new approach to this interrogation. If this deluded human wasn't afraid of physical suffering, then I would have to find some other triggers to pull that could affect his will.

"Your silence is as foolish as it is purposeless, mortal." I told him, formidably leaning with my face close to his. "There is no one you can aid with it anymore. All your brothers are dead, and so are your vampire masters. I have slain your Demigod Zephon with my own hands and now his soul is vested in me. You're all alone here now."

The occultist's orbs again widened in terror, but this time it was a different kind of terror. The prospect of being tortured by me was certainly intimidating enough, but now that I deprived him of the very ground he used to stand upon in his role of a vampire worshipper some raw nerve inside him must have finally been struck.

"However, if you grant me some help you might at least spare your own life." I proceeded. "It is for you to decide: you can either die for nothing, or you can continue to live and find yourself a new purpose you may see worthy to die for."

In response to my offer the frightened eyes of the worshipper went shifty with intensive contemplation. This moment didn't last too long, though, and after a few seconds the masked human frantically wagged his head in sign of consent.

Satisfied with this sort of reaction, I released my grip of his throat and let the worshipper loosely drop to his knees as he instantly started to have a bad cough. I knew this mortal would choose life, for as fanatical as these worshippers were they were nothing but a bunch of cowardly traitors, and without the risk of being punished by their masters or by their brothers-in-arms they were ready to abandon their religious beliefs at any time if their pathetic existence was on the line.

"Very well." I said, almost whispering. "Now show me where you got your bandage."

Still rubbing his neck after my clutch, the worshipper cast at me a tensed look of distrust through the eyelets in his mask and then silently made for the distant part of the chamber. I followed his pace, though still holding my claws unclenched in case he would try to blurt out something.

The red-robed religionist led me to the very end of the room where he leaned over some huge wooden chest standing in the corner and opened it. Then he stepped aside, as if allowing me to have a look at the contents. There were several thick rolls of white bandages inside this chest, a couple of glass flasks filled with liquids of different colors, including red, green and even blue, and numerous tiny metal instruments which purpose I could only guess. Medicine had always remained the most underdeveloped sphere of knowledge among the vampire scholars of the Early Empire, since all vampires relied exclusively on their regeneration ability in matters of healing treatment. Ordinary diseases humanity suffered from didn't trouble the members of my former race as well, so the study of different cures was also neglected for the most part. The only aspect of medical science that was more or less developed was the knowledge of poisons and toxins, but even this sphere was being developed mostly for military ends rather than iatric ones. Therefore I had little but no vaguest understanding of how to use all these things and even whether they had to be used at all or not in case of Bolgor and Zolyn.

For some time I continued to peer into the contents of the chest, irresolutely trying to consider my further steps. Bandaging a wound represented no great issue, but now that I was watching the whole variety of all these means of treatment I began to grow doubtful whether simple bandaging would be enough for the two critically wounded vampire hunters.

At some point I felt some hard stare upon me, and as I turned my gaze away from the kit I saw the red-robed worshipper standing motionless to the left of me and strongly eyeballing me with an expression of uncertainty and agitation in his eyes.

When our glances met, a strange idea suddenly visited my mind and I spoke to him again,

"I brought two severely injured humans with me." I said. "They urgently require healing. I remember that the wound I inflicted upon you was very serious, but you somehow managed to handle it all on your own. It conveys to me that you know how to treat injuries. If you help these two humans I brought here I'll let you live."

I couldn't really believe myself what I had just proposed. Entering into a bargain with a vampire worshipper was a calculated risk, for these cowardly hypocrites had already proven their unworthiness of trust on numerous occasions. But in the end, what choice did I have? I was completely incompetent in matters of healing treatment, and this masked bootlicker standing before me seemed to be the only option I had right now. If he had somehow managed to survive after a maiming left by the weapon as powerful as the Soul Reaver, then he clearly had to know something I didn't. And, after all, I needn't him to even have any true benevolent intentions to obey me in this.

The masked mortal reacted to my proposal with a look of utter astonishment in his eyes, but then nodded his consent curtly. His amenability pleased me greatly, but before I finally headed for the chamber's doorway to bring the bodies of Zolyn and Bolgor inside I once again turned to face the worshipper and pointed at him with my talon,

"And I warn you, mortal: should you even try to hurt these two men or play any other tricks of your treacherous kind I swear I'll rip your insides out!"

The human in a red robe gulped hard at this line and then hung his head low like a child that got told off by his parents. Though I still distrusted this renegade, right now there seemed to be no ounce of defiance or deceitfulness left in his demeanor. After all, fear was always a great stimulus to progress - especially with such craven sort of beings that these vampire worshippers were.


	13. Chapter 13: Revelations

**Revelations**

After I brought the bodies of Zolyn and Bolgor into the lair's room and placed them on the two of the many bunks that stood there the vampire worshipper that I asked for assistance began to undertake some preparatory measures of his own.

First he undressed both unconscious hunters of whatever armor was still left on them, leaving them lying only with their undergarment on. Without the bulky pieces of plate armor to exaggerate the size of their bodies the two injured mortals no longer loomed as large as they were before this moment, even though it was visible they both were well-built and in good physical shape.

Then the red-robed religionist took off his own golden gauntlets and grabbed some iron pot from under the bed on which Zolyn was lying. Upon doing that he went to the far end of the chamber where he drew some water into this pot from one of the wooden casks standing there.

I watched his every move with a fixedness of a hawk, making sure he wouldn't try to hurt the two senseless hunters or anyhow else take advantage of their condition. Although there didn't seem that this religionist could be up to any backstabbing now that I threatened his very life I still remained full of distrust toward his kind and therefore continued to stay vigilant.

When the worshipper returned to take something from his chest with instruments he shot me a frowned look through the eyelets in his mask, probably giving me to understand that my supervising presence was hampering to him. Yet I preferred to remain oblivious to this and still refused to give him any space of privacy during his work here. When he seemed to have realized this too, he just fatefully dropped several instruments he grabbed from the chest into his water-filled pot and then made his way back to the distant part of the chamber.

With the pot in his hand now charged with both water and some metal tools he had just put into it the vampire occultist approached some niche in the left corner of the room and opened what appeared to be a slide valve engraved into the fundament. The revealed deepening illumed with some subtle yellow glowing, which allowed me to deduce that this embayment in the wall was some sort of an oven.

The masked mortal placed there his pot and slid the valve closed, then went back to the chest and started messing about some other stuff it contained. Though I lacked knowledge of the medical science and all its techniques I quickly guessed that the purpose of this strange manipulation with the pot was to disinfect the instruments by way of boiling them in the water. It was a good call, indeed, that this human was approaching his duties with responsibility, and the perception of this fact even managed to flatten a part of my prejudice in relation to him.

The worshipper remained busy thumbing through the contents of the chest for quite a while, thus presumably biding his time until the water in the pot would be fully boiled up. Conceiving it was no use watching him so intently right now I let my concentration ease for an instant and turned my gaze away in a distant reverie.

And it wasn't long before the turbulent thoughts in my head again took advantage of me the way they always did during such moments of idleness. How strange all of this was, I thought: I had initially come to this derelict place with the one and only goal – find my brother Zephon and kill him to avenge myself and make further progress in my quest for Kain. When my journey here had just begun I knew there could be trapped humans held captive in this edifice, but at that point I was absolutely careless of that. I had only the desire for vengeance on my mind then and never intended to become embroiled in any conflicts between mortals and vampires, let alone to become somebody's savior or benefactor. Even as I kept confronting those vampire hunters throughout my mission here I always agreed to help them not out of some kindness or compassion on my part, but merely due to an expectation that they would return me the favor one way or the other that would serve my own purpose. I was self-absorbed and indifferent to anything except for my own goals and whatever good I had done to the humans that I found here was mostly just a lucky coincidence or my stubborn refusal to go against some basic rules of honor.

And now that my objective here was complete and there appeared to be nothing more to hold me anchored to this ghastly place I found myself still staying by Bolgor and Zolyn, reluctant to abandon them to the chance and desperately clinging to whatever scraps of hope seemed to be left for them. What was it that was making me act this way now, I wondered? Did I become too sentimental after my rebirth? Or could it be that my resurrection turned me into a better person? Perchance the answer depended on the perspective.

At some time the worshipper stopped messing about the treatment accessories and made his way back to the oven, his movement waking me out of my musings. Then I saw him taking the pot out of the stove and carrying it back to his place of operation, the water inside it already bubbling hot and effusing a lot of steam. He put the pot on the floor by Zolyn's bedside and then turned up the sleeves of his robe up to the elbows.

I wondered how he was now going to extract the instruments from the boiling water, but then much to my amazement the masked human just shoved both his bare hands right into the pot. One needn't even have had the enhanced vampiric hearing to detect how the bubbling liquid scalded the mortal's skin as he gnarled in pain, though still continuing to hold his hands in the pot for quite some time, obviously more than he really needed just to retrieve the tools from there.

It was only before several seconds passed that the mortal took his palms out of the pot with the instruments clasped in them, their skin all red from the fresh scald. I watched him with some quizzical fascination, at first unable to grasp the reason for this abstruse act, until I surmised that apparently it was another part of the disinfecting preparation.

Once the religionist laid out his newly cleansed instruments in front of him and dropped several rolls of bandages together with some other cloths into the still boiling pot, he approached Zolyn's devitalized body with a decisive air as if looking to finally start treating the hunter's wounds.

My attention at once intensified at the sight of this and I even made several inadvertent steps forward to peer in what the masked mortal was about to do. The worshipper noticed that and cast at me another look of disapproval, again implicitly but visibly making it clear that my close-crowding presence was disturbing to him. As much as I hated to yield his 'space requirement' I was forced to admit that it would probably be best for the affair if I would at least temporary put my incredulity aside and let this mortal carry on his work.

With this comprehension I politely backed up, though still continuing to keep my gaze fixed on the red-robed occultist and all his actions.

Eventually the worshipper passed to the very process of healing treatment and from then onward I began to have little understanding of what he was doing precisely. Since there was all but no point in trying to follow his actions without fathoming their meaning I soon quitted my attempts to control his every movement and tried to relax for short while.

With nothing in particular to hold my concentration captive here I began to idly walk the floor of the chamber and study different details of its interior which I could have overlooked during my first brief investigation of this place. In addition to what I had already observed earlier before, this time I took note of some dusty arcane books piled under a few beds, of some hanks of ropes lying on the ground near the containers with spare weapons and also of one opened chest with folded robes inside it. All these 'discoveries' were pretty hackneyed to say the least and offered no vaguest cause for mediation to help me beguile the moment of my waiting.

But then as I came nigh to the distant part of the room where the oven was installed I lastly spotted there one thing to be worthy of my consideration. In the opposite corner of the chamber facing the stove was another niche in the wall occupied by a huge grey basin pitched into the floor's fundament. It was broad and deep with its brim-line carrying numerous runic symbols of the written language of the vampires. I, however, was able to translate only a couple of them, including the words 'blood', 'life' and 'sacrifice', while the rest remained a mystery to me.

But even this much already explained enough to perceive the purpose of this strange font – it must have been used by the worshippers to collect the blood that they farmed for their vampire masters. Evidently simply cutting themselves and letting their blood flow into the bottles was not enough to constitute a ritual of blood sacrifice, and this basin probably had to add some necessary element of religiousness to the whole procedure.

As I looked narrowly into the font I descried it was all caked in faded brownish splotches, which confirmed my guess about it being used for blood rituals. But then my eyes suddenly picked upon the contours of some engraving showing through the effloresced patches, so I quickly strained my vision even more to descry the details.

What I distinguished then was a printed image of some weird creature with multiple pairs of arms and two heads. Despite the seemingly impossible outward the engraving looked familiar to me, but I couldn't recall where exactly I had already seen such portrayal.

Once again it took me some time to interrogate my recent memory of the journey through this edifice and recollect that the similar image came into my view inside one of the immured tunnels I traversed together with Bolgor and his brothers. Back then I beheld there several human-made murals depicting different inconceivable effigies, one of which was this very peculiar two-headed multi-armed being worshipped by a crowd of people. Since all those paintings looked too odd to be real I never expected any of them to make any actual sense, but for the fairness' sake I had to admit that it was not the first time I kept coming across identical symbols throughout the cathedral. And the fact that one of them appeared on the utensil of the vampire religionists was also speaking of something. Clearly there appeared to be some profound idea behind all those murals, but what kind of one could it be?

For moments I continued to quizzically scan the engraving, trying to see in it any logical link to the vampire worshippers or to the other murals I had laid my eyes upon in the tunnel. The image didn't have many precise details like all the other paintings I had seen and thus had to serve more as a token which true meaning could only be accessible to someone with special knowledge of its background story. Nevertheless I still continued to study whatever particulars of the picture I could discern, trying to make them ring any bell in my mind.

Despite the generally grotesque outward the portrayed creature had mostly humanoid features, which didn't seem to make it kin with the present-day vampires. However, I had no idea how the members of my former race looked like at the very beginning of their devolution, and if this symbol was created some considerable time ago perhaps it could reflect the appearance of the vampires when they were still more rational beings than animals. But even if it was so, what was I to make of all those multiple arms and two heads? What kind of being could such features possibly belong to?

As I put these questions to myself my eyes involuntarily began to count the arms of the printed creature: there were four pairs of them, eight limbs altogether. Aside from the most obvious connection to a spider that this discovery was suggesting it also brought up another association in my memory.

So far there was only one living being I had met that had as many as eight extremities - it was my brother Zephon.

At first the idea seemed too far-fetched to me, but as I tried to analyze this possibility I realized it could actually make some sense. This image could have appeared on the font the worshippers used for their blood sacrifices only for a reason. And who better was to be depicted in it than the leader of the vampire clan these worshippers served? Besides, Zephon appeared to have spent the recent centuries of his life riveted to the fundament of his lair at the top of the cathedral with only his children able to reach him there. In this regard his human servants could have never got to see what he turned into as a result of corruption, which explained all the discrepancies in his recreated image like the possibly former humanoid appearance or these absurd two heads.

At last some clarity seemed to have come, but it also brought some new causes for cogitation with it. Namely, if my conjecture was correct and this engraving truly depicted my sibling the way the mortal artists pictured him to themselves, then what was the meaning of those frescos in the tunnel? I remembered the mural that contained the similar image showing him to be worshipped by a crowd of people. This made sense, for if all this artistry had any connection with the real events, then its scene reflected the way he was deified by the human occultists.

But then there was another scene, describing what appeared to have been the defeat of my brother at the hands of another strange creature that looked like a dragon. It made me wonder who that vanquisher of Zephon the authors of the mural were referring to actually was. Whatever was this creature in reality, its figure had to be vital, for its image could also be found throughout the other parts of the edifice – for instance, on that encrypted area where the second hidden church-bell was placed. Unfortunately I didn't have an example of this picture before me right now to revise its details, while my memory of it was brief and long since blurry. I only remembered the general serpent-like guise of the being and the membranous wings like those most dragons were usually portrayed with.

Wings…

As my mind looked more closely into this peculiarity I suddenly experienced a sense of rapidly growing epiphany overfill me like a river that was about to overflow its banks.

Then I suspiciously glimpsed over my shoulder at the tatters of wings growing out of my back, rather in contemplation than in study. The unlikely deduction that came to me so abruptly felt illogical and a bit rushed on the face of it, but the more I kept analyzing it the more palpably I was sensing some pinpointing familiarity.

A winged being that was implicated in destroying the leader of the Zephonim clan…

I still wasn't sure whether I was wrong or right in my supposal, but the guesses and findings that I had by the moment had brought me to the one and only conclusion - someway somehow that engraved image of the dragon-like creature was a reference to me. The idea sounded ludicrous to say the least, and yet, it was the only explanation.

The depictions might not have been accurate in the terms of their visual details, but if I had interpreted aright the figures portrayed in them then their meaning was finally clear to me. Those murals and their copies throughout the cathedral were all fragments of some ancient prophecy that foretold both Zephon's rise as the leader of his vampire clan and their human servants and also his defeat at my hands.

Earlier one of the vampire hunters told me that the frescos inside the immured tunnel we crossed were very old. It explained the incongruities in the appearance of me and my brother in them – their artists pictured our images only on the basis of some oracles, without ever having seen any of us in the flesh. And though both our portraits were only symbolical, the preciseness with which the mortals predicted the core of the events involving us was absolutely phenomenal. Could it be that my unique rebirth and all that happened afterwards was predestined to come? And if so, was my entire quest for vengeance and for saving Nosgoth already assigned literally stepwise?

As the wave of revelations and further questions they triggered struck me all at once, I found myself to be feeling very confused. The idea of being a part of some arcane human prophecy for sure felt odd, even though it was not the first time I was being hinted at the exceptionality of my role in Nosgoth's fate. First it was Ariel who made a supposition that I could be the only one capable of slaying Kain and restoring the balance to our world. Then it was the vampire hunters who believed me to be their avenging angel that would aid them in their war against the vampire race. But all these equivocal heroic modes everyone kept on ascribing for me were the least of my concern right now. Instead what bothered me for real was the notion of almost everyone around me somehow being aware of my own destiny and my every step as if reading me like a book, while I myself constantly remained ignorant of anything. At first I thought it was only Kain and his so-called 'time-streaming machine' the Elder God told me about that allowed him to peer into the events of the future and foresee my actions. But now there were also the human artists of the cathedral that someway managed to do practically the same. And if these engravings I was studying now provided any real evidence, did that also mean that there could be more traces of my own journey's path depicted somewhere else as well?

Before this infinite chain of inferences and successive questions had brought me to any further meditations I was suddenly distracted by some cough that came from behind me. I blinked once in response as if coming to myself, then turned my gaze from the basin back to the worshipper and the wounded hunters.

The masked religionist was gently bringing one of the glass flasks he kept in his chest to the lips of the senseless Zolyn, who was barely swallowing the red liquid that poured from it into his mouth.

I made several steps toward them, again looking to start watching closely what was going on.

The worshipper noticed my movement, but pretended to be heedless of that and just unflappably proceeded with what he was doing.

I decided not to move any closer so as not to disturb him during his work, continuing to observe his activity from the spot where I stood. Both Bolgor and Zolyn already had all their wounds debrided and bandaged, lots of blooded clothes and metal instruments now lying around their motionless exhausted bodies both on the floor and on the beds. There appeared that I had remained deep in my calculations concerning the mysterious images of me and Zephon for quite some time, during which the vampire occultist managed to treat both hunters' injuries. Now he seemed to be giving them some healing potion to tonic their emaciated frames, or at least that was what I hoped he was doing at the moment.

After giving the same red arcanum to Bolgor, who also gagged while drinking it, the worshipper corked the flask and put it back to other potions in his kit. Then he rose from his knees and turned to me, starting to wipe his blood-smeared hands with the only clean cloth that he seemed to have been left with.

When it became clear that his work was over I stopped standing still and approached him.

"Are you finished?" I asked him once he lifted his gaze to me.

Once again the masked human voiced no reply, but simply gave me a curt nod. I was beginning to wonder if he never cast his voice because he didn't muster the language I spoke or because he was basically mute.

The red-robed mortal continued to silently rub his hands as I shot my glance at the bodies of Bolgor and Zolyn. Although I couldn't evaluate the quality of the worshipper's work here I had a feeling that his treatment had truly redounded to their advantage: even despite the still remaining unconsciousness, both hunters no longer looked as deadly pale as they did some time ago, while their breathing became more vivid and intense. It would certainly take these two humans some considerable time to fully recover, but I still had a strong foreboding that sooner or later they would be alright. It was only too bad Ansek couldn't make it to this moment…

When the religionist was done scouring away the blood from his hands he began to gather up whatever dirty cloths and instruments he left lying around him and drop them back into the pot with water.

I patiently waited until his was through with this as well, and once he was, I addressed myself to him again,

"You have fulfilled your part of the bargain, and so I shall fulfill mine and spare your life." I told him. "But I strongly recommend you to leave this edifice and find yourself a new refuge to stay. Sooner or later the hunters will find out that the cathedral is no longer occupied by the vampires, and when they invade it again I don't think they will be charmed to find you here."

The answer to this tirade of mine was another nod, but this time a more slow and meaningful one.

Thereupon followed a moment of silence between both of us as we continued to stand and look daggers at one another. From the eyes of the worshipper I could see that his attitude to me had changed recently: there was no more glance of awe and trepidation before a ghoulish demonic creature that threatened his life in them. And I had to admit that I too started regarding this mortal from a different angle now: he no longer seemed to me the cowardly pathetic cringer that I used to be disgusted with, even though I perfectly understood that the motives of his actions were far from the ones of benevolence. But credit had to be given where it was due, and regardless of his genuine intentions I knew I wouldn't have managed to save the hunters without his help.

"Go now!" I finally urged him as I sensed that this pause between us began to drag on. "I'll deal with the rest by myself."

The occultist still stared at me for several more seconds after my call, but then resurfaced out of this lingering and turned around to walk away from here.

But before he exited the chamber I sent one last phrase after him,

"And thank you for your help."

The worshipper stopped in his tracks for an instant and briefly turned his masked face to me, his eyes looking a bit surprised. But he quickly remastered himself and then again continued his way.

When he left the room at last I remained peering idly into the aftermath for some time, thinking over everything that had happened recently. As banal as this thesis was, but life truly was an unpredictable thing. Had I killed that worshipper during the fight with his sect I wouldn't have found him here in his brotherhood's lair and wouldn't have convinced him to help Bolgor and Zolyn. The two hunters would have already been dead by now if only it hadn't been for that lucky accident. Ironic, but by occasionally sparing the life of my enemy I also managed to spare the lives of my allies. Perhaps this was just a coincidence, but somewhere deep inside me I had a feeling that it was more than just this; it was another proof of a well-known postulate that was nonetheless very often neglected by everyone, including myself – violence never led to anything but more violence.

At some point I woke out of this trance of thoughts and shifted my attention back to Bolgor and Zolyn. The two human warriors were still lying on their beds motionless with their eyes closed in deep senselessness. Although it certainly felt comforting to see that their wounds no longer remained open with vital blood flooding out of them it was still too early to talk about any improvements. But nevertheless some inner instinct was telling me that at least their lives were out of danger now – they just needed some time to get fully restored. Thankfully this lair was not the worst place for the hunters to stay until this would happen – from what I had witnessed the worshippers had almost all the things needed here, including supplies of water and even some healing accessories. I didn't know if there was some food stored here as well, but even if there wasn't any, hopefully Zolyn and Bolgor would be able to do without it for some time until the reinforcements of their resistance would arrive here and take care of both them and the other warriors confined here.

And this represented another issue that bothered me. With the cathedral finally being free of its vampire occupiers and their human servants, the members of the Human Citadel could already begin to retake it here and now. The only problem was that it was very unlikely that any of them could have had any idea that this edifice was no longer cloistered by the Zephonim. Besides, according to those two hunters from the nearby camp whose conversation I had overheard before infiltrating this building their defeated squadron was now looking to retreat after their previous unsuccessful assault on this place and prepare for a new approach. It was unclear how much time they were planning to spend on this preparation, but if it would take them too long to come here again they could eventually be too late to save their trapped brothers-in-arms that were held captive on the topmost tier of the cathedral.

I made a promise to Bolgor and his brethren that I would rescue them, but due to the inconvenient location of Zephon's lair I was unable to do so. To disburden my heart then I decided to place my hopes on the future reinforcements of the hunters, but now that I assessed the whole situation I realized that this variant offered no solution. As long as the humans were unaware that the cathedral was secure now, they wouldn't dare make a step toward it. This would leave the trapped warriors on the top of the edifice to the mercy of fate, and I had grave doubts that they would be able to last in their comatose state for much longer. Something had to be done about that, but what exactly?

Perplexed by this dilemma I sat by Bolgor's bedside and took thought. What if I was just getting overconcerned now? I had already destroyed the leader of the vampire clan that infested this edifice and liberated it of all its occupiers. I created the opportunity for the mortals to retrieve their legendary of weapon of annihilation from their arch enemies and finally have a hope for victory in their age-long war with them. I even benevolently saved the lives of two humans even though none of them asked me to do so. Whatever favor I could have possibly owed to these humans that I met here I had already returned in full. Yes, I might have promised them to save their brothers, but I never promised to do the impossible. Maybe everything that was in my power had already been done and there was no more need to push myself to any further limits?

When I put this question to myself I suddenly caught myself fathoming that with this clever reasoning I was merely making excuses for me. To convince myself that I had done my very utmost and there was nothing for me to gain in prolonging my efforts was the easiest thing to do. But the truth was I did what I did not because I was trying to return the favor to Bolgor and his comrades, but because I felt this to be the right thing to do. When I was presented with the choice whether to attempt saving Bolgor and Zolyn or to give up and leave them to their own, I willingly chose the first option and it turned out to be the right move to make. It was then that I stopped making excuses for myself and simply followed what my heart was telling me. For far too long I had been trying to justify my failures with dry pragmatism: first when I failed to protect Moldgar from the vampire worshippers, then when I failed to rescue the captive warriors on the apex of the cathedral…

But the time for excuses was over.

Now was the time for actions.

Somehow I would find a way to inform the humans of everything that had happened here and fulfill the promise I made to all the hunters I had met during my quest through this pandemonium.

As I arrived at this decision, my mind at once fixated on the search for the means of delivering my message to the human resistance. After some recollections I realized that the only way to do this was to invade that hunters' camp near the cathedral and simply share the information with its lodgers in an open dialogue. This was not very inventive, but the current state of affairs offered little room for any sophisticated schemes. Besides, this opportunity was rather chancy, for if that camp-stationed squadron had already been paid a visit by the reinforcements of the Human Citadel that could have taken them away from there, the whole venture would prove meaningless. But, unfortunately, there was nothing else to be done – it was a win-or-lose situation, and if those hunters had already decamped by now I would have no choice but to accept coming to the end of the tether.

But even if fortune would smile upon me and I would manage to find those hunters before they would leave their camp I had no idea how I would hold a conversation with them. They would understand neither my appearance, nor my intentions, and would most likely enter into a brawl with me before I would even speak a word to them. And I couldn't really blame them for that, for the notion of a former vampire now turned a wraith, acting as some sort of a human benefactor, didn't sit well with me either. If only I had had some evidence to back up my story that would at least make them listen to me…

Suddenly as my gaze randomly shifted to the pile of armor on the floor that the worshipper stripped both hunters of to treat their wounds I took note of Bolgor's right gauntlet he had showed me during one of our previous conversations. I grabbed the gauntlet with my hand and scrutinized it, trying to focus all the thoughts and ideas its sight evoked in me. This seemingly trivial piece of garment was in fact a cunning contrivance that could unfold into a triple-blade weapon with just one click. But its technical application was not what was stirring my mind now. Bolgor told me that due to the rarity of these devices only squadron leaders of their hunting troops were allowed to have such. And unlike any stories that could seem fabled or fabricated this fact was too specific to be neglected that easy.

If those hunters I was looking to confront would be reluctant to listen to what I had to tell them, then perhaps presenting to them a proof like this would manage to capture their attention.

With this disposition I got up from the bed I was sitting on and held Bolgor's gauntlet in my hand tight, finally being aware of what I had to do now. All that was required from me at the moment was to act quickly, while the rest depended solely on chance and luck. I just hoped Bolgor wouldn't be too upset to find his gauntlet to be missing when he would come to senses. I wish I could tell him for what purpose I was now borrowing his signature weapon, but, alas, in his present state he would hardly get to hear a word of mine.

So I turned to the side of the exit from the chamber, intending to start making my way out of it. But before making the first step I cast an eye at the two unconscious hunters for the very last time and said,

"Forgive me if I fail to save your brothers again. But God knows I've tried to."

* * *

The way back out of the cathedral turned out to be surprisingly short and quick. With no such twisting anfractuous corridors that the upper tiers of the edifice had the lower levels all seemed to be spread out before my eyes, and all it took to get through them was to walk the single track they usually offered. And there were no enemies to obstruct my path as well, for every Zephonim vampire I kept encountering on my way was lying dead in a pool of its own gore, ravaged by the deadly hymn that was disgorged from the cathedral's pipes. I didn't know if the Zephonim also inhabited some other part of Nosgoth's territory, except for the eastern one, but this area was now clearly wiped of their presence for good.

This realization gave me another bitter taste of irony. Earlier when I confronted Kain at the Sanctuary of the Clans, I accused him of committing an act of genocide against my clan. But now that I was beholding the consequences of my own actions I began to comprehend that what I was doing now was actually no much better than that. I might have had vengeance as an excuse for the crimes I committed, but was it enough to constitute a justification? To subject someone to the same suffering I had just endured first-hand? For now I was not yet ready to answer this.

Soon I reached the main gate of the edifice and at last walked out of the former Zephonim's residence back into the open air. The outdoor area greeted me with its vast mountainous landscape and infinite spaces of skies spreading above the high cliffs. The journey through the dark dismal depths of the cathedral was a lengthy one to put it mildly, and now it was a pleasure to finally reunite with the open spaces.

I stepped upon the bridge over the moat and then whirled around me, once more ranging my eyes over the titan of a building I was about to leave now. What at first seemed to be just another quest for my second sibling had turned into a whole big adventure with so many events to have transpired here during which time. Now I was leaving this place liberated of its vampire invaders, and sooner or later it would once again be reclaimed by its rightful owners – the humans. What was going to happen afterwards could only be speculated right now, but one thing I was certain about was that from that moment on a brand new page could be turned both in the history of the two conflicting races and in the history of Nosgoth as a whole.

Sighing to myself, I crossed the bridge and then peeped at the horizon. The smoke-covered sun-disk was just beginning to rise above the skyline, indicating that it was early morning now. I had long since lost track of time while being inside the cathedral and now I was at a loss of how many hours or perhaps even days I had spent there.

Then I looked into the distance at the passage between two mountains that led to the hunters' camp and saw that the bonfire that used to mark this area was no longer there. This was a bad sign, but before drawing any conclusions I still had to check this part of the land and witness with my own eyes whether the hunters had already left it or not. So, without wasting time, I ran toward the mountain pass.

As I crossed the passage-way and approached the camp area, I found out that the fire truly was out, but mercifully the hunters' camp happened to be still pitched here. There was no human outside the tents except for one sentinel black-armored crossbowman who was sitting drowsing with his back pitched against the cliff. Despite my having learned by experience that the vampire hunters were all highly trained disciplined warriors with a lot of strength and stamina they were nothing but humans at the long last, and the innate weaknesses of their kind could still affect their adeptness from time to time. This squadron was lucky that I was not looking to invade their camp with any malicious intent; otherwise they would have had to face some very undesirable ambush.

So the worst anticipations about the hunters no longer being here had fortunately failed, but even now I was in a puzzle as to what I was going to do next. I came here to have an open dialogue with these mortals, but I understood that the very second I would appear before them they would most likely attack me headfirst without even trying to listen to what I had to say. Nonetheless alternatives were not something I was brimming over with at the moment, so if that was what it would take to have my message delivered to these humans I was ready for it. I just hoped that if we would have to brawl it would not be a very strength-consuming confrontation, for I hadn't had the opportunity to feed for already quite a while and thus had run out of some considerable amount of my soul energy.

Tightening my grip on Bolgor's gauntlet I had been carrying all along I began to decisively pace toward the dozing arbalester. The hunter was probably sleeping lightly as a trained sentinel should and detected my footsteps almost at once, shaking up with his whole figure in response to the sound.

"Halt! Who goes there?" the black-armored human exclaimed almost on instinct.

Then he set his gaze upon me and just petrified with shock for a second or two as if being unable to understand whether he had truly waken up or he was still sleeping and seeing a nightmare.

I tried to dissipate the tension by raising my hands into the air, displaying that I was unarmed and lacked any hostility.

"Please, have no fear." I told him as amicably as I could. "I come here in peace."

But just as I barely managed to finish this phrase the crossbowman already aimed at me with his weapon and pulled the trigger. In one split-second swish a short metal bolt struck me right into the chest, causing my vision to swim white with another expulsion of energy depletion.

I doubled up with my whole figure to withstand the dizziness, as a shout came from afore of me,

"We are being attacked, brothers! To arms!"

The next thing I heard was the immediate outburst of fuss arising from where the tents stood and also the distinctive whirring sound of a crossbow in front of me being loaded with a new bolt.

My veins started boiling with anger and vexation as I fathomed that everything was happening just the way I anticipated earlier. Regardless of my recently frequent communication with the humans and even the fact that my attitude to their kind began to change for the better after seeing how honorably and selflessly they could act sometimes, some habits of theirs would still not fail to exacerbate me to the point of uncontrollable fury. But if they could only understand the language of strife and violence then I'd gladly use it to make them listen to me.

The rush of adrenaline returned the sense of sight to me and I rampantly feinted at the arbalester before he was able to fire into me another bolt. With a swipe of my free arm I beat the crossbow out his hands, my new enhanced talons easily crushing the metal weapon to pieces.

The warrior in black armor staggered in surprise, but then quickly made a reach for his scabbard and unsheathed from it a short knife. He tried to slash me with the blade, but I ducked his shot and lithely whisked behind his back, bracing my arm around his neck in a chokehold.

The crossbowman gasped and dropped the knife, starting to desperately clutch at my arm to ease the grip, while I turned around to face the tents, still holding the mortal tight. Other hunters had already started hastily crawling out of their tents in response to the arbalester's call to arms. Some of them didn't even have time to put their armor on, but everyone still looked to be completely ready and eager to join the battle. Most were armed with usual swords and crossbows, but there were also several warriors among them holding other weapons like spears and axes. One human was even carrying a flamethrower like the one I found in Zephon's lair and then used to destroy him.

All hunters were coming to their fellow's aid with promptness and determination, but each time one of them would clap his eyes upon me he always skidded to an abrupt stop, taking several seconds to digest my appearance with a look of awe and stun on his face.

"What is this creature?!" could be heard among them.

"Is that a vampire? Or a demon?"

Eventually the hunters managed to get through with their astonishment and continued to advance on me in a more organized manner. At this sight I pressed the tips of my talons against the throat of the crossbowman I was holding and shouted,

"One more move and I'll rip out your comrade's throat!" I threatened them.

All the impending hunters winced with fear at these words and then stopped dead, exchanging worried glances. Then one human with a sword that stood ahead of everyone bawled out at me with his eyes full of rage,

"Let him go, fiend!"

The warrior I was gripping by the throat was lamentably scanting of breath, his Adam's apple nervously pulsing against the tips of my claws. But for now I was not up to releasing my grasp on him.

"I will," I replied calmly. "But only after you listen to me."

There was another exchange of glances between the warriors, upon which all the quizzical sights were again cast at me.

"I did not come here to pick a fight with you." I proceeded. "I came here to deliver you a message that you should find to be the one of great importance."

The looks on all hunters' faces grew even more uncomprehending after this line as the puzzled whispering began to sound from among their ranks.

"What message are you talking about, creature?" the man that started the subject asked me with his brows knitted together.

"The cathedral you had been struggling for so long to reclaim from your vampire adversaries is no longer occupied by them." I returned. "Your people can finally take what is rightfully theirs."

There was a moment of silence after my announcement, which was then followed by a new wave of intensified whispering among the humans. The intonations ranged from amazement and curiosity to disbelief and scepsis. But the mortal I was speaking to remained completely incredulous as he pointed at me with his sword, his face distorted by a grimace of anger and insult.

"You must think us imbecile to believe these impudent lies, ghoul!" he spat. "Our squadrons tried to storm the cathedral just several days ago, and it was swarmed with these vile wretches from bottom to the top! And you expect us to ingest it could have changed over just a few days?!

"But it truly has." I retorted. "I slew the leader of the vampire clan that used to reside there with my own hands. And some of your fellow hunters that remained inside the edifice after your previous assault managed to activate the cathedral's pipes, which then purified the building of every single vampire that inhabited it. Even the people you call 'the vampire worshippers' were dislodged from the edifice as well."

My interlocutor shifted uneasily at this tirade and lowered his sword a bit, his demeanor visibly changing from an antagonistic to a more inquisitive one.

"And what do you have to back up your claims?" he asked suspiciously.

"This." I responded curtly and tossed Bolgor's gauntlet I was holding in my left hand at his feet.

The warrior slightly staggered back, but quickly recovered his temper and picked up the thing. Some other hunters behind him even made some unintentional steps forward at to have a look at the evidence I presented.

"I know that only squadron leaders of your troops are entitled to have such armament." I elucidated. "I borrowed this from the one with the name Bolgor and brought you as a proof of my telling the truth. If you do not believe me, perhaps you'll believe this."

The mortal studied the gauntlet with a look of perplexity on his face, his eyes turning now to me and now to the piece of armor in his hand. Behind him the murmurs once again grew stronger.

"You… But… How do you know of all this?" he asked in an awkward voice.

"Your brothers-in-arms have divulged this information to me." I replied confidently. "I met them in the cathedral during my personal quest and we combined our forces to repel the vampires that resided there. We fought together side by side and managed to liberate the edifice from its occupiers."

The man with the sword continued to remain silent, still eyeballing me with a puzzled glance. Then another hunter decided to join the conversation, stepping closer to the swordsman. I recognized him by his bald head and the chausses he wore. He was the healer that was talking to the sentinel crossbowman during my very first surveillance of their camp.

"You're not going to believe him, are you?" he told his partner. "Look at him – he's a ghoul! He looks almost as those beasts that murdered our very brethren! He's obviously trying to lure us into a trap!"

"I am not a vampire, and vampires are no allies of mine." I declared rankly. "And if I was looking to kill you, I wouldn't need any set-ups for that; I could well do this with my bare hands with much more ease."

The healer scowled at my sardonic comment, but still continued to stand his ground.

"Very well, creature. If you claim to have allied yourself with our brothers, why didn't you bring them with you as well?" he questioned me venomously.

"Your brothers were severely wounded during one of the fights, so I had to leave them inside the edifice." I answered imperturbably. "But they are alive, and I made sure they were safe when I was leaving them there. You can find confirmation if you enter the cathedral."

The bald-headed human was evidently not satisfied with this sort of reply, but his arguments seemed to have worn off so far, and he went silent again. When it became clear that no questions were going to follow, I proceeded again,

"But there is one more thing I came to tell you," I said, trying to capture even more attention than before. "There are other brothers of yours that are trapped inside the cathedral. They are being held captive on the topmost tier of the building with all the possible ways of accessing it destroyed by the vampires. Because of that I was unable to rescue them, so I had to come to you like this and inform you. They are deprived of any food, water or medical treatment there, and I don't know for how much longer they can hold in such state. But I know that you may come up with some other methods of reaching the pinnacle of the edifice since you are much more familiar with the configuration of this building than I am. And if you hurry, you might make it before it is too late for them."

This part of my message caused the hunters' attitude to change from suspiciousness to concern. Trying to recapture the cathedral just because some strange creature told them it became uncloistered might have been a debatable issue, but now that they understood why it was so urgent they definitely started looking at this from a different perspective.

The controversial discussion between the mortals was growing, until the one with the sword that had been maintaining most part of the conversation with me spoke again,

"Even if what you say is true, I still don't understand one thing," the hunter said, his tone now sounding much less adversarial and more thoughtful than before. "What is the reason for a being like you to help us?"

This was a difficult question to answer unlike the previous ones, for I did not know myself why I was doing that. If I would tell these hunters about the promises I made and the respect and empathy I somehow developed for their fellows during my last journey it would probably sound even less credible than the rest of my story. Apparently in this situation honesty would not have been the best policy.

"Consider this an act of benevolence for someone who shares with me a common enemy." I responded dryly. "I'm not asking you to trust me, but I am asking you to give heed to my words. I have provided you the information, but it's up to you how to dispose of it. Just remember one thing: if your procrastination costs you the life of your brethren, it will be only your fault."

With these words I relinquished my hold of the crossbowman's neck, letting him flaccidly drop to his knees. The mortal began to cough hoarsely, as his partners at once raced to his aid. But before any of them could get too close to me I abandoned my physical form, letting my astral body get drawn into the spectral realm.

The world of the dead greeted me with a loud moan-like sound as the numerous approaching figures in the distance froze and then vanished into nihility. It had been a while since I returned to this dimension, but even after a long interval coming back to this world did not start feeling more enjoyable…


	14. Chapter 14: The Tomb of the Sarafan

**Author's note: **_Sorry for the delay in updates, fellas - the recent winter holidays were not exactly the most productive time I could have had for writing, unfortunately. I've also had some personal issues that prevented me from being able to fully focus on this work, but thankfully they're almost over now and I can finally return to working on this project of mine. As always, big thanks to everyone who continue to read my story and wait for the next chapters - I hope I'll be able to finish Chapter 15 in less time than it took me to finish this one._

_And I would also like to encourage everyone to be more active with reviewing. Ever since uploading Chapter 13 I've had a whole lot of views, but no feedback whatsoever. Please, do not forget that your responses are very important to me as an author, and they make a big part of my inspiration and motivation to write. Even if you have some critical comments, feel free to post them all the same, because as I already said, I'm open to all kinds of feedback. I really work long and hard on this story and I'm trying to do my best to maintain a certain level of quality, so I need to have some references to understand that my efforts are worthwhile._

_Thank you for your kind attention, and now back to the story,_

* * *

**The Tomb of the Sarafan**

There was no need to look hard for the souls to feed on once I was back in the spectral realm. Several yellow sparks of vitalizing energy were already flying about the hunters' camp area, indicating that some of the humans stationed here had given their lives at some point. Though that mistrustful bald-headed healer whose conversation with the guarding crossbowman I had overheard before entering the cathedral said that none of the warriors were wounded fatally, due to the conditions under which they had to make due before the arrival of their reinforcements some casualties must have simply been unavoidable.

The idea of devouring the essences of these dead hunters to sate my hunger did not sit too well with me, but since I knew that sparing them for the eternal imprisonment in the world of the dead would hardly constitute a good deed I tried to view this as a lesser of two evils. I still did not know where exactly the lost spirits of the Underworld were transferred to after being swallowed by me, but whatever this place was I was more or less adamant it could not be worse than this flagrant purgatorial dimension. Thankfully the mortals' corpses did not smolder out after their souls were consumed by me or any other predators of the spectral realm, so I was glad that at least the other hunters would not have to discover their fellows' dead bodies suddenly turn to ashes before their own eyes.

Having pushed aside my sentiments I took down my shoulder-cape and finally reaped the four essences circling above me. This was a long-desired meal, which felt as nourishing as it was satisfying. The energy flocks restored all my expended stamina, making my eyes glare with repletion as the restored projection of the wraith blade in my hand twitched in response to the saturation.

When I was done feeding there was nothing to keep me in the eastern part of the land anymore, so I strode back to the shore-side of the lake that surrounded the cathedral, looking to leave the former clan territory of the Zephonim. My quest here was officially over, and though I did not yet know what my next destination point would be, staying here would definitely add no acceleration to my progress.

While I was walking along the coast the memories of my recent conversation with the hunters continued to churn inside my mind. I did not know for sure if I had managed to reach out to these humans with my message and convince them to place dependence on my word or not, but I would have loved to believe I had. I had already seen for myself how nobly and selflessly some mortals could act even despite any preconceptions when their fellows' lives were at stake. Now I was hoping this would be the same in this case as well, but even if it wouldn't, these hunters could not really be blamed for that. As much as I liked to criticize the mankind for its untutored incredulity and dislike toward any stranger I understood that if I had been walking in those hunters' shoes now I would have behaved equally suspicious myself. These mortals were in a state of war with the vampires, and confiding into anybody during such times, let alone into a creature with appearance like mine, was something that could not be done easily to say the least. After having been betrayed by those who I used to treat as my own family I knew better than anyone how hard it was to trust somebody, especially if this somebody was a member of a race you had for centuries considered to be your arch nemesis. Hopefully these hunters I had confronted could see beyond their prejudice and circumspection and in the end make their choice in favor of doing the right thing. Too bad I could not witness what decision that would be in the long run, and now it appeared I would never know.

Soon I reached the lattice gate that blocked the passage-way leading to the eastern territories I was about to leave now. Once again making use of the ability inherited from drinking Melchiah's soul I pressed my body against the bars and phased through them to the other side of the tunnel.

And just as I crossed this threshold the entire space around me seemed to have suddenly quaked with the resonance of a loud booming voice that spoke to me in a dark and unfriendly tone,

"In the mountains beyond the Pillars, Nosgoth's cataclysms have exposed an ancient crime. Endowed with Zephon's soul, you may now progress where your path was hitherto impeded."

My ancient protector emerged as always unexpectedly, although I could not indulge him in his punctuality – he contacted me as soon as I deserted the eastern lands, just as he promised earlier. I was surprised not to hear any sermonizing reproaches about my intervening with the human affairs and spending priceless time on helping 'a bunch of useless mortals'. But since my omnipresent benefactor had already proven himself to be capable of observing my every move and thought with his all-seeing eye, I fathomed that the only reason to prevent him from displaying his discontent with me could only be his undivided concentration on business. Clearly this guideline he gave me was significant for some reason, but like every insight the Elder God revealed to me this one raised more questions than answers. What was it about this location that had to do with my quest for Kain or for the rest of my brethren? And what was this 'ancient crime' my protector was referring to?

But before I could ask him any of this I sensed the mental connection with his essence severe all at once without a word of warning. As much as I knew the Elder God for his habit of abruptly breaking off conversations, this was too snappish even by his standards. Either he was simply being irresponsive the way he always was, or he was purposely avoiding my possible questions as if there was something he didn't want to tell me. In any case, I would hardly ever be able to find this out, so I set my assumptions aside and focused on my task.

I had no idea what were the precise whereabouts of the destination point the Elder God had told me to travel to and what exactly I had to search for there, but if this location lay beyond the Pillars then it meant I had to return to the territory of the Sanctuary of the Clans and proceed with my journey from there. This offered me a very apt opportunity to visit Ariel and beseech her guidance as to the particulars of my new mission. The spirit of the former Balance Guardian had not spoken to me ever since my collision with Zephon, but maybe if I would talk to her in person she would reveal to me some details my ancient benefactor could have been tender of.

Illumed by this idea I headed back to the caverns that had brought me to this part of Nosgoth. In store for me lay the continuation of my quest and further mysteries waiting to be unveiled.

* * *

The walk through the caves was lengthy and monotonous just like the previous time when I crossed them in the material dimension. From time to time the nomad sluagh would get in my way, but most of them were weakened from starvation and therefore did not represent any real challenge. I battled some of those parasites only for the sake of devouring their essences and thus suppressing my own hunger, which in this realm kept reminding me of itself even despite the Reaver's manifestation.

Although there were plenty of planar portals to fall my path every now and then, I wouldn't enter any of those, purposely deciding to stay in the spectral realm. Even regardless of my strong dislike for the ambience of this eldritch dimension for now there were several benefits I could see in remaining here. One of these was, of course, the time saving, for no matter for how long I would remain here not a fraction of a second would pass meanwhile on the plane of reality. And the second advantage, although it was rather a given than a preference, was that I could infiltrate the building of the Sanctuary only with the use of my youngest brother's Dark Gift, which was not accessible to me in the world of the living. Thence traveling to the territory of my former refuge through the material realm only to shift back to the spectral world just before entering the Sanctuary would not be very reasonable.

Eventually the tunnel found its exit and I once again walked into the courtyard area of the once opulent heart of Kain's Empire. Despite my having already observed and visited the place of my former dwelling on more than one occasion I still couldn't help sweeping my gaze over its exterior façade, again regarding the decadent ruins left of its past grandeur. Sometimes the veil of the spirit world could hide some of the reality's exposed ravages like it was with the damaged pipes of the Silenced Cathedral. But the Sanctuary of the Clans appeared equally ruined in both dimensions, its spectral version reflecting every bit of that dilapidation that was happening to it in the material realm. There seemed that like every fading monument of triumph and glory, this one was now crumbling away not just as an architectural creation, but as a failed dream as well.

Once through with the examination of the castle's spectral outward I hurried to make my way to its front side. Upon approaching its right alcove I took a leap on the ledge of the window right under the flag which bore the insignia of the Melchiahim clan and with the use of the talent that used to belong to my youngest sibling passed all the way through the grill blocking the window frame.

When it was done, I was inside the Sanctuary's premise at last, ready to continue my way to the throne-room where Ariel's spirit was bound eternally to haunt the Pillars. She alone could grant me the answers I required and enlighten me as to the specifics of the new objective the Elder God had committed to me.

The rest of the trek was short and quick, beginning with the main hall and then passing into an octagonal corridor that led to the very seat of Kain's palace. I ran fast and headlong, crossing one annex after another and paying zero attention to the holing up sluagh that tried to strike at me as I passed them by.

As I arrived at the door to the throne-room I slowed my pace and leisurely walked in, once again surveying the view of the Pillars and Kain's throne at their base that greeted my sight from a distance. The spectacle was far from new to me, but I still found myself being unable to refrain from taking it in yet another time. Over the eons I spent burning in the depths of the abyss this place had changed a lot, having lost all its former splendor and magnificence. But there was another thing to have changed for me about it as well, and that was the way I was seeing it now. For a millennium of my vampire life I had always been visiting this throne-hall with pride and dedication, believing it to be the sacred palladium of my former race, the apotheosis of our kind's superiority and domination. The idea of being discomforted by the decaying outward of the Pillars never even once crossed my mind, for I like all my brethren was born and raised with conviction that it was a necessary evil that made the creation of our precious Empire possible. It took me centuries of torment in hell to understand that everything that was built up around these corrupted columns was nothing but a tyrannical formation of blind selfishness and deceit. This building was no palladium – it was a hotbed of a disease, which our kind was the very first and the most to suffer from. And now that I was again beholding the deteriorated signs of the Pillars' corruption I could not help but inwardly ask myself the same question I had been having during most of the time since my rebirth: after so many wasted years, could the balance still be restored to the columns and this world saved from its total collapse?

The dejected sight of the throne-room and all the musings and memories that accompanied it kept my attention garnered for some time until I remembered for what purpose I had come here. I swept my eyes over the hall in look for Ariel, but failed to see her anywhere. This didn't give me pause, though, for I already knew that even while being a dweller of the spirit realm, Ariel was still able to sometimes get lost to view as if becoming invisible. Therefore I realized I had to make my presence to her more noticeable, so I stopped standing in the doorframe and directed my steps to the Pillars.

When I came close to Kain's reigning seat at the base of the cancerous Pillar of Balance, I bowed on one knee and inclined my head, so much like I used to when I attended our Council meetings and displayed submission to my former Lord and father. Only this time I was doing that to address myself to some other person – the one that had also been present here with my Master through all those centuries of my vampire life, but could never make herself known to anybody but her hated successor for the guardianship of Balance in Nosgoth.

"Ariel." I whispered into the empty space, calling to the spirit of the murdered sorceress.

The response was a soft waft, coming at me from afore like some interspatial breeze. It was blowing slowly and gently, giving me the same pleasant sense of calmness and serenity I experienced the first time I met Ariel here. Then out of the corner of the eye I discerned some subtle white glowing emerging in front of me and when I looked up, a gleaming transparent female figure already hung in the air before me.

"Greetings, Raziel." said Ariel in her sweet canorous voice. "I am pleased to see you here again."

My heart bounded with joy in my chest at this phrase of hers. I was not accustomed to being hospitably received by anybody since my resurrection, for most beings I had been encountering from thenceforward were either feral deranged vampires or humans that were scared of me to death. Sometimes the Elder God tried to pretend to be treating me with friendly empathy, but regardless of his clever attempts to do so it still perfectly showed in his every word and intonation that I was nothing but a mercenary to him. I also managed to earn respect and loyalty from some mortals that I had helped during my journey, but these were rather isolated occasions than regularities. Ariel seemed to be the only being in the world that cared about me without pursuing some personal gain or any other selfish purpose. Of course, it was our hatred for our common enemy that united us in the first place, but it never prevented her from always being supportive of me in ways no one else had ever been both in my life and afterlife. She managed to reach out to me on the level that I never believed to be possible and gave me a new purpose in my new existence other than just a cold-hearted path of revenge. At one time or another I even started feeling drawn to her like to a soul mate in our shared misery, but I dared not take her as such, for regardless of both of us suffering at the hands of Kain I knew that the weight of pain and torment that had fallen on her shoulders as a former Balance Guardian could never even be compared to the one of mine.

"Well I'm pleased to be welcome like this." I replied, still feeling a bit flummoxed by her benign attitude to me.

Ariel continued to stare at me silently, her facial expression never changing in response to my tirade. Her face was always difficult to read in fact, partly because half of it was stripped of its flesh and exposing inanimate skull. The other half that remained unharmed was always deep in sorrow and frustration, rarely displaying any other emotions. Of course, there were other feelings Ariel experienced as well, but that was something she showed on an entirely different level – something that could not always be seen, but could sometimes be sensed.

The pause between us began to drag on as I suddenly found myself lingering to address my issue to the female specter. I knew exactly what for I came here and what things I wanted to have clarified, but now that I was present before the spirit of the former member of the Circle of Nine I realized I had no idea where to begin and how to explain everything about the matter I was looking to become advised on. There were so many things related to me and my quest that I never spoke of with Ariel before and that I did not know how to explicate to her, so many things that I knew, but still did not comprehend myself, and most importantly – so many things I neither knew, nor comprehended. It was like a tangle of thread where all the events were tightly interconnected, but both the beginning and the end were still missing.

The realization of this made me falter in some awkward disconcertion, but thankfully Ariel took the job of breaking this uneasy moment for me,

"I sense that something is troubling you, Raziel." she started the subject at last.

I blinked once in return to her phrase as if coming to myself, then nodded my consent eagerly. Ariel's careful assessment of my state of mind even without my having to be vocal about it eased my tension a bit, allowing me to gather my wits and finally form my application to her.

"Ariel," I referred to her again to catch more fancy of hers. "I came here to seek your guidance."

The spirit of the former Balance Guardian didn't reply immediately, continuing to peer at me silently for some time as if contemplating my words. Sometimes it was difficult to tell whether she was looking at me, or somewhere beyond me in such moments, for her gaze was always so distant and detached as if she was not even taking note of my presence around her.

"I shall be glad to offer you my counsel where it is necessary." she said after a pause in her mellow friendly tone.

This finally brought me to the difficult part of putting my complicated matter to the female specter, but after seeing how favorably disposed she was I managed to take on this task with less hesitation.

"It concerns the new mission my ancient protector has committed to me." I began, deciding to take a somewhat roundabout approach to the matter at first. Then I lowered my head to once again recollect all the details of the Elder God's last message and proceeded, "He told me to explore the mountains beyond the Pillars where some…'ancient crime' took place…"

As I kept setting forth all these insights I caught myself inadvertently frowning with every word I uttered. This direction my benefactor gave me was so meagre there was barely anything now for me to present to Ariel, and now that I was trying expound it I realized how terribly so it was. I had no idea how he expected me to make progress with so little information, but this time he clearly did a great job irritating me white-hot with his irresponsiveness.

"…But he never cared to explain to me what crime it is and what it has to do with my primary quest." I proceeded, striving not to show my overwhelming exacerbation. "And so I'm resorting to your assistance: please, unravel to me what it is about this task that I must do."

After I made my request, Ariel lifted her gaze a bit as if looking to the side of the entrance to the hall. One could think this was another pause she always held before answering, but this time I felt that my question truly made her get deep into deliberations. Giving her time to ponder my issue, I continued to patiently wait for her response, watching as her ghostly figure constantly floated above the ground with the tatters of her gown and her undulating hair flowing out as if drifting in water.

It had been a while since the very first time I met Ariel here like this. I almost began to forget some features of her appearance, but now that there was another moment of silence between us I took the occasion to study her habits again. She must have been a stunning woman when alive. I admired her shoulder-length golden hair, her slim figure and the fine womanly inflections of her body. Even her face seemed beautiful to me notwithstanding that scar-like mark of corruption that covered half of it. As I focused my glance on that impairment of hers I found myself unconsciously touching my face-wrap where my lower jaw used to be. It was uncannily weird how our sufferings resembled each other: both of us condemned to imprisonment in the spirit world after death instead of being granted liberation and both of us enduring relatively similar facial disfigurements. We truly shared a lot in common, but I wondered if it was the same with our future as well. Was I like her destined to become the eternal captive of this accursed dimension, only able to helplessly watch as the world around plunged into a quagmire of its own apocalypse?

Before I could start revolving this question any further Ariel's attention abruptly came back to me. The spirit of the dead sorceress looked me in the eyes again and then proclaimed,

"Like a corpse in a shallow grave, corruption rises to the surface... Beyond these Pillars, the defiled victim mutely screams its outrage..."

I knitted my brows together at these words, trying to fathom their meaning. Ariel indeed had the habit of talking in some strange poetic enigmas from time to time, but right now this was not what I was looking to hear from her. I had applied for her guidance because I wanted to have some clarity put in my dilemma, but her cryptic message hardly offered any. There were already enough riddles I was surrounded with by the moment, and to have more of those was something I needed least right now.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked her bluntly.

Ariel again took a second to pause on the word the way she always did, but her demeanor remained equally confident as she already had the answer to my straightforward question.

"There is a blasphemous secret of your Master Kain that he buried ages ago within the neighboring mountains in hopes that it would never be uncovered again." she elucidated. "But these tortured lands have found their way to decorticate it, and now all the histories better left forgotten are no longer veiled from disclosure. And it is you who must unearth this secret, Raziel, for it holds the key to your past."

This information made me rise from my knees in surprise.

"My past?" I marveled. "But how?"

"There is much to your previous existence that you are not even suspicious of now." the female spirit answered calmly. "You may perfectly remember every single day of your life as Kain's favorite son and servant, Raziel, but those mysteries I'm referring to are something you cannot possibly have any memory of at the moment. It may seem inconceivable to you now, but you will understand everything once you lay your eyes upon these arcane truths."

Still wrestling that shocking sensation Ariel's explanation had provoked in me I tried to systematize all those new insights that had just been unveiled to me. At least it was clear now why the Elder God had assigned this task to me. But what was that secret of Kain that 'held a key to my past'? And more importantly, what could there be about my past I did not yet know?

"But I still don't understand where and what exactly I should be searching for." I continued to quizzically enquire the female specter, choosing as I believed the most vital question among the many that her guideline triggered in me.

"It is the ancient Tomb of the Sarafan you must seek out." Ariel returned. "Once you find a way to infiltrate it, you'll be granted all the answers you desire."

As she filled me on this location I took my eyes away in muse. The name of this tomb Ariel was speaking of was familiar to me from Kain's stories that he told me and my brothers when were still fledglings. According to him it was there where the most prominent Generals of the infamous Sarafan order that had all but exterminated our kind in the ancient times were buried. We heard a lot about this burial vault, but there was no way for anyone to see or visit it, for the mausoleum was hidden deep in the cliffs, inaccessible to any approach. For centuries this abandoned shrine was nothing but a forgotten piece of Nosgoth's antique history, but now it emerged reachable again, and what was even more significant – emerged as a part of my current journey. But what kind of connection could it have to me or my past? How could the events that transpired eons before I was ever born have affected my destiny in any way?

Once the new round of questions and imperceptions encompassed me I shifted my glance back to Ariel.

"How can a burial place of several Sarafan warrior-priests possibly have to do with my past?" I asked her, now growing skeptical.

Ariel cast down her eyes and sighed.

"For now this is something I cannot tell you, Raziel." she said with a note of candid pity. "You have to uncover the mysteries that lay within this Tomb all by yourself; otherwise you shall never fathom their true meaning. And without fathoming your past you will never be able to make progress in the present."

When she finished this line I couldn't help but hang my head down in disappointment. The clarity that I had been reckoning on so much didn't come even with Ariel's assistance, and although she appeared to be sincere in her regret for not being able to help me now I still couldn't shake the feeling that she like my ancient benefactor was also constantly holding something from me. Probably sensing my chagrin, the spirit of the former Balance Guardian continued to excuse herself,

"Please, do not take this the wrong way, Raziel – I really do wish to tell you everything." she whispered almost caringly. "But it is vital that you decipher the secrets that await you by discovering them for yourself. And with this I simply have no right to interfere." She paused after this tirade and then added, "I'm sorry."

Silence ensued between us again. The spirit of the former Balance Guardian continued to hover in the air before me while I continued to stand still with my gaze fastened into the ground. Deep down inside I realized she was honest when saying she couldn't just tell me everything here and now. There was always a reason for everything that Ariel did, and there most likely had to be one for her not being able to reveal all the insights to me right now. And yet, I just couldn't make myself cope with once again being held in the dark. This was something I had had enough with the Elder God, and now to have the same with her – the single being in this world I could really trust – felt like being backstabbed in the worst way possible. I could see she didn't feel comfortable with doing so as well, but I still couldn't accept it. So instead of trying to console her by saying I understood I just continued to stand silently in my grudge which I wished I was not feeling now.

At some point Ariel seemed to realize I was not going to say anything in reply and just floated away from me with her spirit vanishing from view. But even after her disappearance I still went on standing riveted to the spot for some time, partly in reverie and partly in some strange vacillation. It was a shame our conversation had to end like this. She was someone I held dear to heart, after all, and I hated to hurt her feelings with such moments of my surliness. But her guideline had touched some chord in me and I couldn't do anything about that now. What was it about my past that I needed so much to unearth? And why was it so important that I do this all on my own?

Clustered around by these cogitations I stopped standing stock-still and began to make my way to the planar portal.

* * *

Upon my return to the material plane I decided to channel my antsy thoughts into more practical matters. My goal was to travel to the territory beyond the Pillars, which was the one that ranged from the back garden of the Sanctuary of the Clans. It was a poorly explored part of the land, for the Sanctuary's building blocked the only path leading there, and the single noteworthy object to be located on this territory was that very same Tomb of the Sarafan, which was still beyond anybody's reach. But regardless of whatever mysteries lay in store for me there, to extricate them I first had to find route to this location, and this very issue I was looking to see into right now.

I ranged my eyes over the space of the throne-room, trying to calculate the solution to my problem. In days when the Sanctuary was still intact from the Pillars' corruption the only way its back garden could be reached was from the balcony of the upper tier that used to be located right above this hall. Unfortunately with the ruination of the palace the upper level had collapsed completely, leaving nothing but debris on the floor of the throne-room and the stubs of its former fundament on the supporting arcs. The entrance to the balcony area, however, was still visible to me from where I stood now, but it was placed at a height of about fifty feet above me if not more.

On the face of it the location seemed unattainable, but then I fixed my gaze on the arcs that used to hold the foundation of the former tier and studied them as well. There were seven of them altogether, one carrying the emblem of Kain and the other six carrying the respective symbols of all the lieutenants' clans. Most constructions were just as badly decrepit as the rest of the hall, but one arc with the token of the Dumahim clan somehow managed to retain most of its formation, thus standing the highest to the upper entrance. And while it was still too high for me to jump on, now I possessed some new ability that could help me conquer a summit like this.

At last grasping what my next move should be I clawed at my flesh to free my right hand of the Reaver blade and then came nigh to the arc. Thereupon I latched onto its decaying fundament with my talons and began to climb it. The ability I had acquired from devouring Zephon's soul once again proved to be invaluable as my improved claws easily dug into the moldering stone, causing its parts to crumble into dust with every plunging move they made.

Scaling vertical surfaces in such fashion was still new to me, and at first it was slow going to move on like this. But gradually I managed to get the hang of this unusual action and in less than a minute I was already at the top of the arc's pillar.

As I glimpsed to the side of the entrance to the balcony I realized I was still too far away from it. Though the arc I was clambering was the highest of all, it was not the nearest to that area, and there was still some considerable distance to make to reach the passage-way. This revelation made me study my environment again in look for something that could be of use here.

After another examination of the painfully familiar surroundings I again took note of the rim of the dilapidated fundament of the former upper level encircling the walls of the throne-hall. It was very rugged and clearly fragile, but considering the circumstances the only way I could now get to the balcony was to grab on these stone beams like I did on this arc I was clinging to now.

So I leaned away from the pillar toward the rim of broken concrete and took a spring on it. My hands again dented into the rotting stone with their morphed talons, the left hand digging in with authority, but the right one unluckily catching on an especially weak fragment of it and accidentally crushing it to dust, thus losing the grip. I thought I was going to lose balance there, but the fixity my new claws provided was so strong that even with one hand I still managed to retain the hold of the surface.

When I realized that the danger of falling down blew over I forced my right-hand talons into another more solid part of the collapsed fundament and then lastly managed to start side-scaling the wall toward my destination.

After another clumsy attempt to imitate a Zephonim vampire I finally reached the entrance and pulled myself up on its ledge. Once standing on it firm with my feet I turned around to cast one last glance at the hall I was about to leave. This was a unique vantage point to study this place, but it still did not improve the general view of the scenery. Even from here all I could see was nothing but slabs of wrecked stone lying everywhere and the decaying Pillars standing in the midst of these shambles like some polyps growing in the middle of a morbid inflammation. As much as I hated to agree with Kain on anything I had to admit he was right to say during our previous confrontation that 'this place has outlasted its usefulness'. But even though I no longer had any good memories associated with it, I still could not divest myself of the feeling of sentiment for the former heart of our once noble Empire.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…

Sighing to myself at this eloquent expression that tingled through my mind I turned back to the pass-way and proceeded to the balcony.


	15. Chapter 15: Shattered Memories

**Shattered Memories**

When I finally arrived in the balcony my gaze was greeted by the sight of the Sanctuary's back garden which I had been recently meaning to reach. Just as I suspected earlier this area remained nearly untouched by any explorations even after my death, and all that could be seen from here were only small natural crags and foothills gradually passing into higher cliffs in the distance.

However, the territory was not without some clean ground to walk on, and once I noticed that I safely leapt off the balcony to continue my way into the depths of the mountains afore.

The high plateau I landed upon elevated right above the territory of the Abyss, affording a very panoramic view on the entire area surrounding it. Although right now my every thought was focused on the very enigmatic task that awaited me ahead, I still couldn't resist the curiosity to approach the verge of the precipice and study the unique vista of the terrain lying beneath. I had never stepped on this high ground ever before in my previous life, and to observe the heart of this land from such a vantage point had to be a one-of-a-kind experience.

As I came close to the ragged edge of the plateau and peered down from it I couldn't help but be amazed by the spectacle that burst upon my eyes. For it was not only the painfully familiar vortex of the Abyss some hundred yards below, but all the adjoining grounds and mountains and even the waterfall flowing into the Lake of the Dead that could be seen from this spot as well. Nothing of this tremendous landscape was new to me, but to watch it from such an all-round perspective was still giving me an uncanny feeling of some rapturous delight. Despite Nosgoth's nature being in a state of decay, some of its bounties like these still managed to retain a measure of their beauty, even though it was no longer the same first-begotten beauty they had before the corruption began. And while I continued to admire the chatoyment play of color of the Lake's sea-green waters my mind still revolved around one question: if this world still had some reserves of strength left in it, was it really not too late to save it?

For some time I just stood on the brink of the plateau, staring at the sublime scenery beneath me and sometimes casually kicking some tiny rocks into the chasm below. At such a height the gaping maw of the Abyss didn't seem to me as dreadful as it did in a closer look, although I still couldn't help shifting uneasily each time I would remember the moment of falling there when I was being executed by Kain and my brethren. But at least from here I was able to watch the whirlpool's waters cycling down into the darkness beneath without constantly having the chilling sense of anxiety running up and down my spine as it normally did at this sight.

It was not long, though, before I came back from this moment of rumination and remembered about my primary objective. I had already spent too much time on empty contemplations, so I hurriedly pushed all the melancholic attitude aside and turned away from the precipice to resume my path to the mountains. Though these territories were unlikely to have many twisting routes, I was still unaware of the precise whereabouts of this Tomb of the Sarafan I was looking for. Therefore I had to move on quickly in case the prospective searches for this location would take me longer than I estimated.

Intent upon business again, I began to stride along the only path threading through this mountainous land. Underneath my feet the ground was subtly shaking with low rumblings, reminding me that the planet was still in a state of torment from Kain's selfish decision to become its Emperor. At first these slight tremblings did not disturb me, but then I recalled the words of the Elder God's direction he gave me after I left the territory of the Zephonim clan. My ancient protector told me then that that 'ancient crime' I was ordered to uncover 'was exposed by Nosgoth's cataclysms', and by 'cataclysms' he most probably referred to these very seismic tremors I was sensing now. And if the earthquakes here were powerful enough to unearth an entire mausoleum buried deep in cliffs, then it was an admonition for me to be careful once I would reach the heart of these mountains.

Slowly the feeble protrusions of rock on the ground started to alternate with more imposing ridges, some of which coalesced into entire cavern-like tunnels. As I walked through these mountainous passes I noticed that most of the cliffs were badly deflated, their cracked surface looking as if they were moments away from rumbling down on me. This was another proof of the seriousness of the seism taking place here and a further impediment to my travel through these lands.

Aside from this, the ground I marched on kept on getting rougher by every pace, the ceaselessly growing rocky knolls under my feet making it really hard for me to trudge along them. Whatever was that secret Kain had concealed in these lands, he picked a perfect place for such venture, for the stiff terrain of this part of Nosgoth could easily thwart the progress even for someone with exact knowledge of the Tomb's location.

After crossing several short tunnels and walking back into open surface I stumbled upon a corpse of the Dumahim ghoul right in the middle of the track I was walking. The black-armored beast was lying on the rocky ground face-plant with a long metal spear sticking out of its broad back. As surprising as it was to find a vampire on this hardly accessible territory, it was even more surprising to see it impaled with a human weapon. I had no clue how any vampire or mortal could have reached these lands and what could have brought any of them here in the first place, but whatever were the explanations it was a sign that even here there was a possibility of running into a confrontation with the members of these two races.

Since earlier I had to dispose of the Reaver blade to scale my way to the balcony, the first idea to come to me when I approached the dead Dumahim was to arm myself with the spear it was staked with by retrieving it from its cadaver. But before my hands reached for the weapon to make a pulling move I remembered that removing the cause of fatality from a vampire's dead body could result in some very undesirable consequences – namely, its soul reanimating its flesh and turning it into a revived vampire. What was even worse was that after the return of their feral souls to their bodies the resurrected ghouls emerged as spirit-devouring entities, which feasted on any sorts of soul energy, including the one that sustained me as a dweller of the spirit realm. The experience I had had with these beings during my journeys through the Melchiahim and Zephonim clan territories was still fresh in my memory, so for now I preferred to remain armless rather than take such a risk, thus leaving the black-armored ghoul to rest in piece, if such figure of speech was even appropriate in this situation.

When I moved past the Dumahim's corpse and continued my way down the mountain trail I saw that it was smoothly beginning to curve to the left, leading into another tunnel. This one looked to be longer than the previous passages I had crossed here and was also much darker inside. But its darkness was not what daunted me about it. The ground of this terrain was still shaking ominously from time to time, and though the rumblings were not very intense, they could still be a foretoken of a greater earthquake to come at any moment later. And if this earthquake would hit the area of the tunnel when I would be inside I might not have the time to make a quick escape due to the long length of the passage-way.

To avoid such lamented course of events I had to shift to a place where such acts of nature as earthquakes did not have a say, and that place was the world of the dead.

Once I arrived at this solution, I quit hold of the matter around my spirit and allowed the spectral reality to embrace me with its nebulous cold touch. The land environment around me seemed to become inundated in this instant as all the cliffs and hills within my sight warped into unrecognizable forms and shapes. The same happened to the tunnel in front of me, but it still remained quite passable, and as soon as I adjusted to the changes in the surroundings I finally stepped into it without former hesitation.

* * *

The obscurity of the tunnel that had already struck my eye in the world of the living got only worse after the shift to the tenebrous atmosphere of the spirit realm. The darkness became so thick I could barely see anything through it and had to walk most of my path almost entirely to the feel. This was an unpleasant side-effect of the translocation to the phantom world, but it was still a better alternative than running the risk of getting trapped under a landslide in the world of the living. Thankfully the shift to this dimension had also returned the wraith blade's projection to my right arm, allowing me to slightly illuminate a small part of the gloomy space around me with its otherworldly green fire.

With the ground under my feet no longer trembling with the spasms of the deceasing planet the walk through the mountain passage felt almost serene. It could have felt almost quiet as well if only it hadn't been for the constant echoes of the departed souls that always added to this realm's sound palette. But this was something I had long since grown accustomed to and was not too much disturbed with now.

However, after some time the screams of the imprisoned spirits stopped being the only thing to violate the stillness of this dark place. Over a distance of several dozen yards the distinctive sounds of scuffling paws and champing jaws suddenly became hearable. And though it was probably another inherent attribute of the dead world as well, this was something I had not and did not want to grow accustomed to, for these disagreeable sounds I was detecting now could only belong to the loathsome sluagh - the ravenous vermin of the Underworld.

I wasn't surprised to find them here, for such big swarthy tunnels as this one were among the very places these spectral creatures most eagerly preferred to lurk in. And whereas normally I wouldn't have wasted my time and energy on confronting such unworthy opponents, right now I found myself in a mood for some sluagh-hunting. Besides, I had not come across any wandering souls to feed on so far, and these parasites I was about to clash against could also provide me with the covetable sustenance.

Raising the Soul Reaver at the ready I continued to march forward, following the aftersounds of the sluagh's noisy fuss somewhere ahead. Had it not been for the impenetrable blackness of the tunnel multiplied by the dense haze of the spectral realm I could have already distinguished my potential preys from afar, but now with almost nothing visible beyond just a few feet around me I was forced to rely solely on my hearing.

Nonetheless after coming about a dozen yards closer to where the sounds were coming from some gleaming figures in the distance finally began to grow discernable. Those were the very sluagh I was expecting to see, the characteristic blazing halos around their beast-like bodies giving off their appearances even despite the thick tide of darkness.

At the sight of this I slowed my pace, still keeping on cautiously drawing nearer and looking narrowly at their pack. There was quite a gathering of these beings there, about nine species clustering close to each other. Most of them seemed to be just wandering randomly and gaping around, constantly making those unpleasant munching noises that had attracted my attention in the first place, while one scavenger that moved on all fours like an animal was crawling about in the midst of this melee and sniffing at the ground with its frog-like snout as if searching for something.

There appeared that all these creatures were in pursuit of some lost souls to regale themselves with, perhaps having even combined forces of several smaller packs at once toward that end. But it didn't seem to me that these mindless predators had been any more successful in this than I was as of yet, which suggested that my previous observation about this place lacking the essences of the dead was not that trivial after all. Apparently that murdered Dumahim I had encountered before entering the tunnel was a rather rare case, while mostly there really had to be very few beings that could stroll into this area in the material realm and then perish there so their released souls would occupy this territory on the spectral plane. And if everything was just as I had envisaged, then it meant that this throng of sluagh I was looking to assault would be my only opportunity to satisfy my hunger in the near future.

At some point my approach was finally spotted by the pack of the spectral beasts as several of them looked up at me wonderingly with their flaring yellow eyes. Then without a moment's thought they all greedily swept on me, stamping with their paws against the flat shadow of the ground beneath and foaming at their sharp-toothed mouths. With such an advantage in numbers they seemed to be feeling pretty confident against me even regardless of the starvation that must have weakened them by this instant. It almost made me feel sorry for these creatures' lack of intelligence that prevented them from having the slightest idea how great would be the disappointment that awaited them.

The first sluagh to run up to me was the big quadruped that moved faster than its bipedal companions. As it got close enough for an attacking move it waded into me slapdash with its jaws open wide for a bite.

I sidestepped its lunge and made an uppercut with my ghostly sword, ranking the predator deep across its ugly muzzle and spraying its luminescent goo-like blood all over its startled pack-mates that followed behind.

The four-footed wretched moaned in pain and dropped to the rear, as some of its partners abaft of it clumsily fumbled in panic. Clearly these cowardly beings were not reckoning on such a stiff opposition, and now even regardless of their gregarious cohesion each parasite's individual bravery was still beginning to falter.

After some confusion and mayhem within their ranks the sluagh lastly managed to regroup and then carry on their onset with two of them attempting to advance on me from different sides.

Without waiting for these creatures to strike first I attacked the one that was closer to me before it even managed to make any menacing move, incising it with the blade all the way through its gelatinous husk. This vermin must have had less stamina than its bigger four-footed companion, and one precise blow was enough to destroy all its substance at once, leaving it a wispy transparent spiritual essence. The defenseless ethereal sluagh was then momentarily ingurgitated by the Reaver that shrieked in a dazzling flash of its own flame, which made the rest of the pack stagger back in fear.

Trying not to lose the gained momentum I rapidly darted at the other sluagh that tried to impend on me from the left. But to my surprise the spectral predator was able to dodge my swoop, cannily avoiding the sword's firing frame by mere inches.

This missed shot left me open to an attack, which one of the sluagh to the right of me was bold enough to capitalize on by quickly rolling toward me and chopping at my chest with its clawed paw. Had this skirmish been ensuing on the plane of reality this petty blow would have already deprived me of the Reaver's power, but here in the spirit realm it always remained summoned regardless of any damage done to my body. Thence before my assailant was able to come up with any further manouevre I violently retaliated by swinging the wraith blade in a broad vertical motion that would have cut the soul-eater in half if its flesh had been corporeal. The creature's composition was nearly incinerated by the flaring-up weapon and then its revealed essence at once disappeared in the blade's green fire with a loud scream of torment.

The sluagh's pack continued to suffer casualties as its animal-like member that moved on all fours decided to come to grips with me anew. This time the beast attempted to get at me with the use of its long massive forepaws that could hit much harder than the ones of its smaller bipedal congeners.

Seeing that some of the other less valiant carnivores were now trying to cower behind their bigger counterpart's back I decided to cause even more bustle within their crowd, and when the four-footed sluagh was about to take a swing at me with its huge limb I just leapt all over its large carcass and dove at the scavengers standing abaft of it instead.

None of those creatures in the rear seemed to have expected such a move on my part and most of them were only able to let out a startled yelp when they saw me pouncing at them from above like a hawk. A few vermin, though, managed to shrug off their stupor before it was too late for them and move out of my way, but several less prompt ones had the Soul Reaver grazing them fatally and then consequently devouring their weakened spirits.

The havoc went on spreading among the sluagh pack as some of its members already started stampeding horror-stricken every which way. Using this as an opening to finish off the bigger sluagh I had just vaulted over I swiftly whirled around and delivered another blow to the quadruped beast that happened to be already looking to strike at me from behind.

The creature spilled another gallon of its green tremelloid blood on the ground, but its bulk somehow retained its solidity, indicating that the parasite still had some energy left to sustain its form. This was a bit unexpected, but I didn't quit pressing on and immediately aimed for another shot at the four-footed brute.

But before I was able to administer it, another sluagh abruptly came from the right and ravened at me with its forepaws raised high for a vertical brunt. It was just as unexpected as the survival of its bigger pack-mate after two attacks of mine, so I barely managed to counter by bringing forth the wraith blade in front of myself. As a result, the sluagh's own momentum made it barge straight into the sword, getting it impaled on its firing blade and melt away in the tinted spectral flame.

Another carnivore of the spirit world was neutralized, but the distraction it caused me allowed the tetrapod sluagh I had failed to eliminate seconds ago to finally get a clear shot at me.

The moment I turned my eyes to it the spectral beast gruffly charged toward me and rammed into my midsection with all its imposing mass, forcing me down to the ground back-first.

Caught off my guard, I attempted to kick out of the being's pressure by stabbing it with the Reaver, but then to my further astonishment the predator pinned my right arm to the ground with its large front limb. Despite the low intelligence this sluagh still had the grace to deduce that my symbiotic weapon was a source of great danger and made a very wise decision to prevent me from using it. But it failed to foresee that this was not the only way I could hurt it, so without delaying an instant I whipped the soul-eater across its slobbering chaps with my left-hand talons. This might not have been as forceful as a cut of the phantom sword, but with my previous attacks having already depleted the reserves of the predator's vitality it was enough to make it lose whatever was still left to hold its matter together.

The sluagh gave a loud groan with its whole bulk becoming transparent and intangible and then ran for dear life. But before it could get too far away from me I pulled down my scarf and allowed it to gobble the creature's exposed essence.

The bright blue glow that radiated from the hole where my throat used to be slowed down the fleeing spirit and dragged it back like a magnet until it disappeared there with an anguished cry. To absorb a soul with my own maw felt much more nourishing than to do this with the wraith blade, and for once in a while I felt close to being fully satiated.

With the biggest sluagh and more than half of the other members of its pack destroyed, the few scavengers that still remained alive had no other choice but to yield their self-preservation instinct and tail to their heels.

But even after nearly completely sating my hunger I still was not up to letting them escape. So I rushed after the cowardly fugitives, intent upon hunting down every single one of them.

The bipedal sluagh could move pretty fast too, but their speed was still no match for mine and one by one I kept running them all down and feeding them to the Reaver.

Eventually there was only one last parasite left that continued to desperately run away from me into the depths of the tunnel. Being one of the main carnivores of the Underworld, it was not accustomed to a role of a chased prey and very soon began to fall back as the distance between us kept on shortening foot by foot.

In the long last it shared the same fate that had fallen to the lot of its former pack-mates and drowned in the fire of my ghostly sword.

When the chase was over I skidded to a stop and took some time to fetch wind. The fight I had had with those sluagh could hardly be called an arduous one, although it was not very often that I had to battle so many of them at a time. Thankfully the frozen-still stream of time in the spectral realm offered perfect conditions for having a short rest whenever such necessity arose, and now seemed to me the very best moment to make use of this.

Once I was ready to move on I looked into the distance and clapped my eyes upon an interesting peculiarity. The far end of the tunnel didn't look as pitch black as the rest of its space I had been straying through all along, and all the surroundings there appeared far more discernable.

As soon as I noticed this I quickly directed my steps toward that part of the passage, already starting to feel the thick tide of darkness around me slowly but surely dispersing with every next pace I made.

After I covered the distance of about twenty yards a bright sight of the exit finally appeared before my eyes, commanding me a view at the open area of the vast mountainous territory it was leading to. It turned out that the chase for the fugitive sluagh had almost brought me to the end of this tunnel, and now the long roam through this dark passage was about to draw to its close at last.

Gladdened by my discovery I walked the very last feet that separated me from the exit and finally stepped out of the tunnel into the open field. Though the spirit world was a gloomy dimension by nature, to see its open-air cobalt misty aura after the dense blackness I had been wandering through felt like an improvement.

The passage-way brought me to another broad plateau with most its ground almost entirely cleared of any crags or mounds. However, beyond this clean area everything was tightly smothered with high cliffs that seemed to be boxing it from all sides possible. At this rate this field appeared to be the dead end of the rocky path I had traveled from the territory of the Sanctuary of the Clans, but there were no signs of the Tomb or any other artificial building to be seen here.

This was a reason to grow suspicious, but I tried not to jump to any conclusions, bearing in mind that the illusions of the spectral realm could sometimes differ a lot from what reality had to offer. Therefore I decided to hold over my explorations until I would be back in the material realm.

By lucky chance a conduit to this dimension was glimmering right in the middle of the plateau I was standing on, so without wasting time I resolutely headed for it.

* * *

The return to the world of the living did not bring with it any changes to the local environment, except for the surrounding mountains retrieving their normal undistorted outward and the earth underneath me again starting to shake periodically.

The Tomb of the Sarafan also didn't miraculously emerge anywhere near, while the path itself still remained deadlocked on every side.

Frustrated by all these findings, I began to pace about nervously and think. It was not likely that both Ariel and the Elder God could have been wrong about the one and same direction the two of them had given me. But if this whole track I had walked to get to this part of the land truly was one-way, then where the hell was this mausoleum I was supposed to discover here? Or I was just seeking it in the wrong place?

Stressed over this problem I continued to strain my mind, trying to comprehend if there was something vital I could have missed. In the meantime the ground I was standing on went on quaking slightly, but ominously, causing the cliffs around me to have some of their rocks split off them and cascade down to their bottoms.

At some point this managed to divert my attention from my musings and I idly swept my gaze over the mountain that stood in front of me, hoping that maybe watching it slowly crumbling away will help me sort out my restless thoughts. The large landform before me seemed to have long since decayed to its very core, its jagged surface looking all dark brown from the everlasting efflorescence with numerous clefts pervading it up to its peak. Notwithstanding this the mountain was still extremely tall and rose so high into the skies that it took quite an effort to discern where its tip was.

As I attempted to range my eyes all over it to take in its height I noticed that in the middle of this mountain at about fifty yards above the ground was a vast rocky ledge going deep into its relief. And while there was nothing unusual about a cliff having some shelves or snouts, it was something else there I saw out of the corner of the eye that greatly aroused my curiosity.

On the verge of this rocky prominence was lying a piece of a fractured stone column, recognizable by the distinctive decorated capital at its end and the engraved flutes running along its shaft. Although the column was all dilapidated and brownish, which nearly made it melt with the color of the cliffs surrounding it, there still could be no doubt left that it was an element of some artificially created structure. And whatever was that structure this column belonged to, the fact that it appeared on the ledge of this very cliff before me had to be a sign of something. There was no guarantee it had any relation to the Tomb of the Sarafan I was searching, but to know this for sure I would have to climb up the mountain and find this out for myself.

Certainly this would be a venture on the off-chance that could easily bring me nowhere, but for now I was simply out of other options. Besides, even if it would not pay off, it would at least provide me with the view overlooking this highland territory and perhaps then I would be able to find my bearings.

Once again I had to slightly injure myself to make the Reaver's projection disappear from my right arm. Then I unflinchingly approached the bottom of the mountain I was looking to conquer and forced my spiked talons into its ramshackle surface. Earlier my ancient benefactor implied that the arachnid talents I had earned from consuming the soul of my brother Zephon would help me "progress where my path was hitherto impeded". I did not know how literal this guideline was intended to be, but perhaps to reach the burial place of the elite Sarafan Generals it really wasn't enough just to walk the trail leading to it, and now it might have been time for me to do some scaling to achieve this goal.

With this idea registered in my mind I latched tighter onto the craggy relief and began to climb.

Scaling a mountain felt easier than scaling a fundament of a building – the cliffs were much more yielding to the plunging moves of my claws, but at the same didn't crumble to dust each time I tucked into them, thus sparing me the risk of falling down. The only difficulty was that I had never climbed up anything that high before, and the effort it took me to keep going like that was quite excruciating.

At some time I started traversing more swiftly, leaping up the mountain's surface higher and higher almost like a real spider. This was a less safe way of getting to the top than simply clambering there, but it still managed to accelerate my progress.

Soon I reached the ledge of the cliff and pulled myself up on it. After having such an operose ascension I planned to get some short rest first, but as soon as the layout of the rocky platform I had perched upon got into my view I quickly forgot about all my weariness.

For what I saw before me in the distance of about twenty feet was a broad circular stone platform with its periphery planted with several pillars similar to the one I had earlier spotted on the edge of this cliff from the ground. Some of these pillars were also downfallen with their wrecked fragments scattered around, but those that remained more or less unharmed still managed to support some sort of a canopy above them that made the whole structure look like an altar. And behind this altar-like construction could be seen a broken lattice gate built right into the canyon's wall and admitting to some immured passage going deep into the mountain itself.

Although I had never seen the location I was in search of now ever before and thus had little but no vaguest idea how it was supposed to look like, the signs of its entrance I was beholding left me no room for the doubt that it was the very goal I had been pursuing ever since having left the territory of the Zephonim clan. There it was - the ancient Tomb of the Sarafan, once impenetrably sealed; now, ravaged by Nosgoth's upheavals, its mysteries lay exposed.

As I began to pace closer to the altar-like extension the vaults of my conscience were suddenly intruded by a lurid ominous voice that belonged to no one other but my ancient protector, who referred to himself as the Elder God,

"Take heed, Raziel. A forgotten history lies within. Know thyself - though it may destroy you..."

This unsuspected message made me stop in mid-stride and take a moment to digest it. To hear my restorer give me a warning like this felt as unexpected as it was to hear him at all, considering how concise and unvocal he had grown recently. But if now that I had already found the Tomb by myself and no longer required anybody's assistance he still chose to admonish me in such a way, then this clearly had to be speaking of the seriousness of the revelations that lay in store for me inside this mausoleum.

Just like Ariel, the Elder God was speaking of some dark secrets awaiting me there, and the way he was cautioning me against disclosing them most likely proved that they truly had to do with me and my destiny. But what kinds of horrible enigmas could those be that they were so dangerous to uncover? Of course, given that it was Kain who stood behind them one could expect nothing less than the worst things to come. And yet, how could they be so virulent that the mere knowledge of them could destroy me?

Still standing in fluctuation, I continued to ponder the words of my ancient benefactor and the fresh memories of my last conversation with Ariel. Both their warnings and premonitions about this objective had caused me a lot tension and alertness, but at the same time they had greatly fueled my desire to unearth those truths that Kain had buried within this Tomb. After everything I had been told I couldn't help but feel anxious about facing all those strange mysteries, but I also knew that there would probably never be another opportunity like this to unravel something that had a relation to my past. After all, clarity was something I had been striving for ever since my resurrection, and even if finally gaining it meant putting myself at risk, then this was the risk I was ready to take.

With this comprehension I cleared my mind of all doubts and picked my way toward the fractured rusty gates. No matter how dangerous or shocking were those mysteries lying in wait for me within this Tomb, my decision was final: whatever it would take me, I would unveil them.

* * *

Crossing the entrance brought me into an odd delta-shaped corridor where the lateral walls were directly connected to each other, forming a triangular passage with no ceiling. At first I was at a loss what could have driven the architects of the Tomb to such an unorthodox construction style, but after I sensed another seismic jolt reverberate through the space of the cavern I realized that such a strange form was a precaution against landslides that reached here as well.

The passage was curving down into the depths of the mountain like a spiral stair, leading to some deep underground premises. Normally it should have been just as dark as the tunnel I had crossed previously to get to this part of the land, but thanks to the oil lamps hanging on the walls the space around me was gently illuminated.

The fire these lamps burned with must not have been an ordinary one; otherwise it would have long since gone out. Instead it appeared to be a magic flame that only the vampires could create by using a spell called 'Light'. It was a basic vampiric ability, which allowed its user to brighten dark areas or kindle small flammable objects like torches or firewood with just one click of its talons. The blaze that was created as a result could burn practically eternally unless only there would be no outside attempts to forcefully put it out. Therefore the presence of these burning lamps here was an indication that the Tomb had truly been infiltrated at least once before, and that intruder must have been no other but Kain. Apparently he just carelessly left these tracks of his visit here, believing that no one would ever be able to get even close to this place. Well, regardless of the outcome of my quest here, I would at least be glad to prove my former Master wrong as to this self-assertion of his.

As I kept on descending down the passage I continued to conjecture what sorts of disclosures could be awaiting me ahead here in the burial vault of the infamous Sarafan. Since my birth as Kain's first vampire son took place eons after the very last generation of these inquisitors was ultimately exterminated from this world, I had only sketchy knowledge of this Order's history based on the tales of my former Master and the arcane tomes I briefly studied as a fledgling. In the time of Vorador, centuries before Kain was made, the Sarafan warrior priests waged a merciless war against the vampire tribes of Nosgoth. Emboldened by righteousness, they committed unspeakable and indiscriminate acts of violence - massacring fledglings and ancients alike - they decimated entire bloodlines in mere decades. Now their husks lay here - murderers enshrined.

Eventually the deep tunnel I was walking found its end, or, to be more precise, found its dead-end. The chamber that the passage brought me to turned out to have no doors or pass-ways, just bare walls, blocking my path from all sides.

But after all the hardships I had already endured on my way to this mausoleum I knew better than to believe that such a long trek I had crossed could simply lead me to an impasse. So I stood in the middle of the cramped room and started studying the walls around me, looking for the signs of any clandestine passage-way or embrasure in their fundament.

It was not long before I sighted that the front wall had a huge stone block embedded into its section that looked distinctly outlined against its whole background.

Upon descrying this I quickly approached it and laid my palm on its surface. The slow motions of air coming through the cracks between the wall and the block could be sensed most palpably, betokening that there really was some cavity space behind.

Once I detected this I quickly forced my talons into the stone fragment and began to withdraw it from the wall. For any other potential intruder with ordinary physical strength it would have probably been a considerable impediment, but thanks to my enhanced power I managed to pull the stone free with ease.

As I did this, a sigh of sepulchral air escaped the inner chamber. I was not prepared for what lay beyond this threshold, and so it was with a sense of seething anxiety and trepidation that I entered the revealed shrine.

The expanse that unfolded to my view from the cover of shadows was a vast ornate chamber with numerous long ivory rafters carrying its brownish domed fundament. Each wall section had an oil lamp attached to it like the ones I had been marching past on my way here and also some mystical paintings engraved on their surface.

But I never had a chance to study any of those pictures as my attention at once got invited to what stood at the bottom of those wall sections.

The crypts. The very ones where the bodies of the most prominent Sarafan saints must have been buried eons ago and then placed within this hidden mausoleum. But all of them were unsealed, the lids removed from the caskets, displaying them to be empty inside. The corpses of the human warrior priests that were supposed to be lying in them were gone as if having been stolen or ravaged. Was that the very unhallowed secret of Kain that Ariel and the Elder God had been urging me to unearth? Was Kain responsible for the defilement of these tombs? But why would he have done it? Even someone as cruel and sadistic as my former Master should have had some good motive for such a barbarous act. There could have been no personal bad blood between him and these Sarafan Generals, for they all perished centuries before he was even born as a human. And Kain clearly wasn't someone who valued his vampire heritage that much that he could have tried to avenge his murdered ancestors in such a perverted way.

None of this made any sense. But what seemed to make even less sense was the idea that any of this had to do something with me or my past. Why should this whole story have been important in the first place? What in the world was it about it that mattered to me or my journey?

Before I was able to give thought to any of these questions I suddenly distinguished some inscriptions carved on the tablets hanging above each crypt. I quickly stepped closer to the center of the chamber to do a double take, but what I saw then happened to be something I could have never dreamt even in my worst nightmare.

All these tablets bore the names of those that were supposed to be resting in the caskets underneath them…

My brothers' names…

And my own…

This was something so unbelievably absurd and incogitable it even felt ludicrous at first, and for some time upon discovering it I just continued to stand frozen-still and stare stupefied at the inscriptions around me as if trying to make sure I was not hallucinating. And yet there they were - the names of all my brethren and myself engraved above those defiled sarcophagi of the Sarafan saints: Zephon, Melchiah, Rahab, Dumah, Turel… There was also one casket marked with the name that did not belong to any of my siblings – Malek. It seemed familiar to me nonetheless, but due to the thunderstruck state of mind I was in now I couldn't remember from where it originated.

Slowly the feeling of nonsense that this finding had given me began to get replaced with the feeling of utter dread and dismay. To see the names of our dynasty on the tombs of the Sarafan inquisitors seemed like somebody's stupid joke or trick at the start, but the more I was revolving around it, the more some terrifying disquietude kept on growing within me. My mind was rabidly calculating different variants and versions as to how such delirium could even be possible, but all the ideas I arrived at were either preposterous or meaningless. This was only adding to this tensing feeling of disturbance I was experiencing from beholding all this drivel, sending more and more waves of agitation through my very sentience.

For moments I just stood motionless, consumed by my own abashment and disbelief. My body could not have obeyed even if my mind had been in any condition to offer it any commands. My eyes constantly gazed forward, fixed on the empty casket with my name engraved above it. The lack of any logical sense that this entire spectacle made was so disturbing it was making me feel as if I was on the verge of becoming insane. And still, some restless thoughts in my head that were not yet numbed by the infatuating touch of confusion were still trying to find the answer to this absurdity presented before me.

Suddenly I sharply staggered back from where I stood, barely refraining from losing my balance. The irony of Kain's blasphemous act rushed in on me with the crushing force of revelation. In one single instant it all became clear - an epiphany, an opening of eyes as all the shattered fragments at once came together in one terrifying whole. Nothing of this was a joke or a set-up. All of this was complete truth – the terrible shocking stigmatic truth. There was not just my life as Kain's vampire son and my afterlife as a wraith. There was also the third one – the life of a human Sarafan warrior, the memories of which I had been stripped of after being raised from the dead by Kain.

So this was the 'ancient crime' my benefactor and Ariel were referring to. This was the very mystery that 'held the key to my past'. And what a horrible mystery it was: to find out that for eons I had been kept ignorant of who I really was before Kain turned me into his vampire servant against my own will… to spend countless ages in aberration and misguidance, being faithful and loyal to a tyrant that was not even my father that he claimed himself to be… to treat as kinsmen the very beings I used to ruthlessly fight against in my previous life I was completely unaware of…

When I began to dwell on all these ghastly findings I sensed as if my very conscience was starting to fall apart. My own existence had just been turned upside down, and I was not sure if I could cope with such deranging perception. An entire life ripped off from me, the memories of it shattered forever and never to be retrieved again… At the mere thought of this my head just began to swim, the surrounding space of the chamber now looking as if swirling around me with my brothers' names on the graves starting to constantly float before my eyes.

Unable to withstand this dizzying feeling of vertigo I limply dropped to my knees and closed my eyes tight, clutching at my head with my hands in an attempt to make this panic attack go away. But the weight of the consternating truth I had discovered was too heavy for me to handle and I soon found myself lacking the mental strengths to battle the disintegrating force of my own despair. The realization of my first incarnation being the opposite of everything I had ever stood for was literally splitting my ego in pieces.

Nothing seemed to be true anymore, not even myself…

Just when I thought that I was about to plummet completely into the whirlpool of my uncontrollable madness my weakened mind was abruptly invaded by the voice of the Elder God that for some reason managed to keep me afloat on the waves of my vanishing sanity,

"Yes, Raziel - you were Sarafan..." the ancient being declared to me. "Born of the same force that all but destroyed your race. Before the dawn of the Empire, you were chosen. Kain, Nosgoth's solitary, self-declared monarch, plundered this tomb and raised you from these crypts. Breathing his vampiric gift into your defiled corpses, he resurrected you as his favored sons."

And so it was an official confirmation of what I had already disclosed by myself. I, like all my brethren, used to be the warrior of the Sarafan Order – one of the people I had for centuries believed to be the merciless butchers of my once noble race. But now in one momentary flash of enlightenment all the tables were turned and all the notions of good and bad I ever had were reversed against each other. The curtain of falsehood that my former Master created so long ago with his blasphemous act had finally dropped, and now all the filth of his past sins was revealed to view. Just like Mortanius the Necromancer brought him back to life as a vampire, he did the same to me and my comrades, but never cared for the consent of our liberated spirits. And how ironic was that the future Emperor of Nosgoth picked the very ones responsible for the genocide of his own kind to be turned into his closest, most loyal lieutenants…

I used to think that it was only when he ruined my wings and cast me into the Abyss that he betrayed me, but now I understood I was wrong… His betrayal happened much, much earlier – eons ago when he denied the souls of me and my former brothers-in-arms our rest and desecrated our corpses with his befouling vampiric curse. He took away not just one, but two lives of mine, and one of them he took away even from my memory. I didn't think that anything could ever compare to my hatred toward him for his condemning me to the torment in the Lake of the Dead, but it appeared I was wrong about that as well. If it was even possible, my enmity to Kain had escalated to the levels I did not know I could have. It was a pure, uncontained, boiling wrath that I was feeling for him now, and coincidentally it was the only thing to prevent me from yielding to the madness of the harsh truth I had uncovered.

Nothing seemed real anymore, but one thing did, and that was my desire for vengeance.

It had never been stronger before, and now it was the only feeling to keep me sane. There were times during my journey that I wanted to separate myself from it by attempting to put aside my personal goals and think about the fate of this world or the salvation of someone I cared about like Ariel…

But now all of this immediately paled into insignificance. Now there was only my revenge I was willing to respond to. Just like when I was first granted my rebirth by the Elder God, there was only the revenge on my mind again. The shock and desolation were still present, but now the revived hatred in me was not allowing them to do any more damage to me than they had already done. I was still weakened by what I had just been through, but now I refused to be defeated like this…

Not here and not now…

For all one was worth I would make Kain pay for what he had done to me and my brothers…


	16. Chapter 16: Morlock

**Author's note:** _Dear fellas, I'm very very very sorry for this colossal delay in updates. I've been having some really difficult times for the past several months and could barely find an opportunity to write practically anything. But now I'm back and so is my novelization. Unfortunately, I cannot promise you that now I will be able to update it as regularly as I used to, but one thing I assure you of is that I'm never going to quit writing it until it is finished. _

_And, as always, I thank everyone who still continue to read, review and follow my story even despite my lengthy periods of silence. Believe me, it means a lot!_

_Thank you for your kind attention and now back to the story,_

* * *

**Morlock**

Little by little my revitalized anger was starting to overcome the state of catalepsy I was left in after disclosing the truth about my past. I never thought that there would be a day when I would feel so grateful to my own hatred, but the fact and the matter was that it alone was able to keep me anchored to the last residues of sanity I still had upon finding out that my life as a creature of the night was nothing but a fraud… a fraud imposed on me after the end of another life, which in its turn was forever erased from me and my memory. Even in such a desperate moment my hatred managed to scramble its way through my gorgonized mind and restore the sense of purpose to me… the purpose of vengeance I had been seeking ever since my rebirth.

Only this time it was a different kind of vengeance. It was no longer about Kain betraying me after a millennium I faithfully served him and condemning me to this loathsome existence I had to languish in now. It was not even about him heartlessly extirpating my clan after my death. Now it was about a millennium spent in lies and deceit, being constantly poisoned with mendacious morals of a man that had all this time been impudently pretending to be my father and maker. It was about being bereaved of my true life and heritage along with my comrades and then set on a misguided path that contradicted everything we used to stand for as Sarafan. It was not just some personal bad blood anymore – it was an insulting spit in the faces of me and all my brethren, an atrocity so dishonest that there could be absolutely no forgiveness or redemption for it. The horrifying mystery I had revealed might have done a lot of damage to me, but as long as the honor of me and my former brothers-in-arms remained unavenged I would not stand down… not until Kain would pay me dearly for all his violations…

Over time the flabbergasting throes of the panic attack began to release me from their grip, allowing me to retrieve most of my conscience and lucidity. The aftereffects of the shock I had experienced, however, were still very fresh, continuing to make me feel all woozy and slacken. My arms and legs remained rocked with some diffused weakness and my head was still groggy, although the former feeling of intense vertigo was almost gone by this time. I had never endured such a mental implosion ever before in my entire existence, so until this moment I had no idea how devastating the power of emotional distress could be. Just one rush of frightening theomacy was enough to literally paralyze both my body and my mind, leaving me at the mercy of my own subliminal agony. In some ways it felt even worse than my torment in the Lake of the Dead, for even a suffering as poignant and tantalizing as this one could not completely compare to the feeling of being on the brink of total madness. Unlike physical pain it was beyond any endurance or control – it just kept on relentlessly consuming you, cracking the very fundament of your sentience.

It turned out that my ancient protector truly was not being insincere when saying that the histories hidden within this Tomb could destroy me. Hopefully I happened to have what it took to survive this psychic onslaught, but even now with the worst being over the thoughts of my horrifying discovery still curdled me with shivering fright. Clearly it would take me some more time to completely reconcile myself to what I had found out and maybe even re-evaluate some of the opinions I used to have before this day…

After a while I managed to force myself into standing, though still feeling pretty unsteady on my feet. In addition to this the underground premises of the mausoleum continued to shake with low rumblings that had been accompanying me all the way here, which was also not giving me more firmness on the ground. But at least I was again able to adequately process what was going on around outside my wounded mind, so I didn't heed the remote tremblings much and just continued to stand erect, waiting for the equilibrium to fully return to my body.

However, this was not to come when all out of the blue another seismic impulse again hit the area of the shrine. But this time it was much, much stronger than all the previous quakes that had been percussing through this place heretofore. The vibration that enveloped the chamber was so strong that the entire space before my eyes seemed to start shaking as if the mountain I was inside was trying to move away from the spot of the land it was riveted to. The floor at once began to jumble with great vigor, almost making me lose balance again, while from above small rocks and sand started hectically coming down on the ground like rain. The sound of the cliffs crumbling all around kept on getting louder with every passing second, and I quickly fathomed that everything was about to come to a rockslide. Even though the Tomb's frame was built to be protected against slumps and avalanches, it was obvious that no construction could possibly sustain a tremor that intense, and therefore it could be a matter of seconds before this entire burial vault would become buried under the weight of this collapsing mountain.

Soon the floor underneath me already started to rupture with a huge cleft beginning to form at the distant side of the chamber, and I realized that if I didn't want to find myself under piles of debris I would have to promptly make an escape. And the only effective way for me to do this right now was to retreat to the spectral realm. Although I still felt a bit unfocused after the commotion I had just experienced, the gravity of the situation had boosted my mental strengths, allowing me to funnel them into the act of shifting to the dimension of the dead.

So I released the substance around my spirit as the surroundings of the chamber immediately filled with colors of blue and green with all the physical objects twisting and warping weirdly. When it happened, the premise stopped trembling and grew still again, the air becoming quiet and lifeless the way it always was in this dimension.

But before I was able to breathe a sigh of relief it suddenly turned out that the changes in the environment did not stop at the cease of the earthquake. Just at the very time the ambience of the spirit realm almost settled I saw the ground underneath me abruptly beginning to morph in some unusual way as well. The interspatial transition caused the floor to start slumping downward, making it look like liquid draining down into a crater. It all happened in one secondary volt of alteration and I barely managed to react when the surface of the floor right under my feet disappeared altogether.

With no chance to refrain from falling down I just helplessly slid down this suddenly emerged hole in the floor, desperately trying to cling to the slipping fundament around me with my talons, even though knowing it was pointless – in the spectral realm matter could not be affected physically.

My body dropped some thirty feet on the floor of some deeper underground tunnel. The landing was not hard, for all the surfaces here were nothing but flat shadows of themselves, but there was still an intense feeling of impact the moment I collided with the ground of this chasm. This caused my vision to grow beclouded for an instant, but this effect was quick to pass off, and then, as the blur before my eyes dissipated, I saw the light disk of the hole I had just fallen through to be visible high above me.

For some time thereupon I continued to lie on the ground and just stare idly at this hole, trying to set my heart at rest after the still shocking discovery about my past and the rockslide that almost buried me straight after. Now the worst danger blew over, but after falling from up there the way back to the Tomb's vault was no longer accessible to me. What was the reason for the unexpected presence of this chasm here in the spectral realm was beyond my understanding, but with or without this understanding I was now left with one and only option, and that was to pave the path into the depths of this passage-way I had fallen into and hope that it would eventually lead me out of these mountain catacombs.

With a little effort I got back to my feet and turned my gaze from the aperture above to the blackness of the tunnel's deep space that lay in front of me. Unlike the underground passages I had crossed formerly to reach the Tomb's chamber this non-existent tunnel was not lined with any oil-lamps hanging on its walls, thus being covered in pitch black darkness literally impenetrably. The only thing to illume my dim path was the green light of the wraith blade that got restored to me after the shift the spirit realm, but even that was not enough to provide sufficient vision through such obscurity. Nevertheless I still walked into this expansion of blackened space that lay before me, looking to start groping for my way out of this place.

With almost all my basic senses dulled by the atmosphere of this dimension, moving through all this gloom almost entirely to the feel felt far from comfortable. Being a former creature of the night I knew no such thing as a fear of the dark, which, on the other hand, was very common among the human kind. But now that I was forced to roam through the thick darkness of this passage-way, multiplied by the indigenous opaqueness of the dead world, it became easier for me to understand what was going through the mortals' minds when they were put in the same position. It was not the darkness itself that was so disturbing, but the general uneasiness it created. Perhaps the reason most humans were so much afraid of it was because it deprived them of one of their senses they relied on most – the sense of sight. And since they had no other amplified skills or abilities like those of the vampires that could compensate for the obtunded vision they probably felt very vulnerable and insecure when the cover of obscurity fell upon them. After all, darkness was a perfect cloak for ambushes and other untoward surprises, and it could really put somebody without the means of orienting in it in great danger. I wondered if I too had the same fear when I was a human, but after everything that happened to me afterwards it appeared I would never know this again.

Fortunately the tunnel turned out to be short and one-way, and soon my clouded sight was met by a set of grates with some weak light splintering through them. Upon coming nigh to it I closed my eyes and nestled my body against the grill, concentrating on willing myself to pass to the other side of the passage-way. Thanks to the Dark Gift I obtained from imbibing the soul of Melchiah the bars just silted all the way through my flesh as if it was made of liquid until the lattice gate was left behind me.

Once on the other side, I opened my eyes and at once had the visual image of the premise I had entered become revealed to me. It was a chamber about twice the size of the burial vault I had recently visited, brightened by the radiance of multiple souls flying through its space. This was an indication that lots of lives were cut short here in the material realm some time before. After having not fed for a very long time already I did not linger a second to gobble all these lost spirits and immediately drew down the shoulder-cape from my maw, inviting all of them there. It was a rich and nourishing meal that stilled my stinging soul-hunger and also mitigated some of the residual weakness I still felt after the previous panic attack.

As I was through with my feast I proceeded with the examination of the place. In the middle of this chamber was set up a broad stone platform with four pillars, surrounded by a shallow water-filled recession that looked like a moat of sorts. This recession at once reminded me of the numerous sewerage-like trenches I had seen in the Silenced Cathedral.

But the most interesting part of this whole entourage was located right in the middle of this circumfluous platform, or, to be exact, above it. Levitating in the air right over this stone prominence was some barely discernable glimmering object, encircled by a sullen halo of turquoise-colored light. Due to the foggy visibility of this dimension there was no way to descry what exactly this object was, so without continuing to strain my eyes for nothing I just jumped over the recession to see it in a closer look.

After getting over the moat I approached the hovering thing and finally managed to observe its external view. It looked like an artifact in form of two interconnected sea-green rings, one of them placed inside the other like in a gyroscope and both of them constantly spinning in the air around each other in the same fashion. The artifact was all wispy and ethereal, which to some extent reminded me of the outward of the Soul Reaver when I for the first time discovered its unbound spirit in the spectral realm after its corporeal form was shattered during my combat with Kain. I still perfectly remembered that fateful moment when I grabbed the hilt of the hovering blade and then in one superlunary explosion of energy it accreted to my body for eternity, becoming my symbiotic weapon. And now that I was watching this peculiar object levitating before me I felt as if it was inviting me to do the very same thing to it.

I was not sure whether touching this gyroscope-like object would constitute a wise move or not, especially considering how unpredictable the outcome of such risky manipulations could be. And yet, I just couldn't resist my curiosity to do this. So with a mixture of flutter and anticipation I gently reached for this combination of interlaced rings, slightly squeezing my eyes shut at the prospect of whatever could come out of this.

However, it turned out that all my apprehensions were invalid as my hand just phased all the way through the hovering object as if it was a mere ghostly illusion. The artifact appeared to be permeable and intangible as if its presence here was only a projected image from the material dimension. To find this out felt both relieving and at the same time a bit disappointing, since I was already prepared for something monumental to happen here. But it still didn't make the whole mystery around this object any less intriguing. Clearly there had to be something vital about it, and now that I came so close to understanding what it was I was now up to going the whole length of unraveling it. And maybe if luck would have it, such opportunity would present itself in the material realm.

Just as I thought of it my eyes instinctively surveyed the place around me and instantly spotted a white areola of a conduit glowing at the distant side of the premise. It couldn't go unnoticed to me that the location of some planar portals could sometimes seem very convenient as if someone was purposely placing them everywhere for me to find. This was, indeed, another interesting issue to ponder, but evidently not the top-priority one among the many I had at the moment. Therefore I decided not to dwell on it for now and instead approached the opposite verge of the platform, looking to take another jump over the moat toward the portal.

* * *

The translocation to the world of the living restored the natural colors to the surroundings of the chamber, which, however, constituted little improvement in comparison with the spectral realm, for most of them appeared to be no much brighter than there. But the coloring of the place was what bothered me least right now as I at once directed my eyes to the side of the platform in the middle of the room, looking for the signs of the gyroscope-like object I had deciphered earlier in the spectral realm. Much to my disappointment it was nowhere to be seen, and even though the premise was deeply submerged into the darkness I knew that no obscurity could possibly hide radiance as bright as the one produced by such notable thing. This object was evidently absent here, which was odd, for I was dead sure that that translucent brumous image I saw in the eidolon dimension was a projection of what reality had to present. That artifact was unlikely to be the innate feature of the spirit world, otherwise I would have most likely managed to touch it. There had to be another reason why it was not tangible there, and I still remained certain that the answer to this puzzle had to be searched for here in the material dimension.

The thoughts about the mysterious artifact had enticed me so much that I did not even notice the call of my own visceral senses trying to alert me that I was not alone in this chamber. But just when I was about to respond to them and start searching for the signs of any extrinsic presence in this place, the lurking stranger happened to be the first one to reveal himself by emitting a loud animalistic growl from the shadowed corner of the room.

Wary now, I raised the Reaver for an attacking move and fixed my eyes on the distant part of the chamber, carefully listening to the sounds of clumping footsteps starting to come from there. It lasted only a few seconds until a pair of diabolical red eyes emerged from the veil of shadows and the dark shape of some imposingly looking figure finally stepped into the light.

The sight of the creature that turned up before me made me freeze on my spot for a moment to digest its terrifying appearance. It was a massive being of vampiric guise, tall and very well-built. Its skin was of olive-green color, while its taloned arms and legs were bulged with hard, blockish muscles. The creature's torso was just as statuary, having very prominent abdominal and pectoral muscles.

But the most distinctive part of the monster's exteriority was neither the skin color, nor the strong body-build, but the ears – they were pointed and horrifically oversized, almost like those of a bat. The head that carried them looked no less hideous, being hauled taut by the same venous membrane that formed those large ears. As for the face of the being, then with regard to all the other features its ugliness appeared to be a given: it was pug-nosed, with a lower jaw being more protrusive than the upper one and carrying two large canines jutting out of it in a hoar-like manner.

The examination of the beast's bloodcurdling habits kept me so mesmerized that I nearly forgot to turn attention to the details of its garment. There were not many attributes thereof that the creature was wearing, only brown leather leggings, tightly fitting its muscled legs, and a dark-green should-cape, carrying the symbol of the clan this wretch belonged to.

As I looked narrowly at this symbol I recognized it as the insignia of the Turelim – the clan fathered by the eldest of my younger brethren, Turel. This gave me to understand that this abomination standing before me now was one of the descendants of my most powerful brother.

The finding didn't feel as shocking as when I first met the representatives of the other vampire clans, especially now after all the discoveries about my past I had recently made. To see the consequences of the degradation of my once high-born sibling certainly felt pitiful, but now that I had uncovered the truth about our origins I no longer regarded the early years of our vampire lives as something to be dear to lose. Those times were nothing but the inception stage of our formerly noble dynasty's defilement and profanation, only with less deforming effects to have overtaken us then. There was, in fact, no distinction between what was then and what was now – the corruption had always been there, invited to our hearts and to our minds ever from the moment Kain raised us from the dead as his vampire sons. Our visages might have changed over time, but the poison of Nupraptor the Mentalist had always been running in our blood, slowly evolving and developing to the point it became now. This was the price to pay for the contributions we made to the creation of Kain's tyrannical Empire upon the infested surface of this dishallowed world. And while we were all unwillingly lured and fooled into making these contributions, we still had to incur our condign punishments for the atrocities we committed against Nosgoth.

In the meantime the Turelim on the platform continued to eyeball me with a curious and at the same time pelting look, its chaps slobbering excessively and its bat-like ears twitching every now and then. Judging by its size and the red glow in its eyes this species had to be an adult, although I had not yet seen any other members of the Turelim to have the complete comparative benchmark. But what perplexed me even more was that despite this creature looking no more rational than the other brutish ghouls I had been encountering this far, for some reason its gaze seemed to me quite knowing and intelligent as if it was looking at me with some understanding of who and what I was.

The idea did not seem very believable at first, but then quite fabulously it proved to be true when to my greatest amazement the slobbering jaws of the seemingly unreasonable beast in front of me opened to pronounce some distinct articulate words,

"Heretic! You shall not pass!"

To hear this Turelim speak was surprising to say the least, for I never expected any of the today's vampires to show signs of rationality. But nevertheless it appeared that the children of my eldest brother somehow managed to retain their speech and their conscious minds, although still suffering the same exterior deformations as the other clans. Perhaps this was the consequence of Turel being the second most advanced of son of Kain after me, and considering that the brood of Dumah could not boast of the same, the Turelim seemed to be the only clan to have been able to overcome the dementing effects of the corruption. It made me wonder for a moment how much farther my own clan could have progressed had they been spared.

But what caught even more fancy of mine was that some tones in the bestial growl of this Turelim seemed somewhat familiar to me. For some reason it felt as if I had already heard this creature before, but when and where this could have happened had escaped my memory.

It was only when I recalled the years of my early vampire life that I understood why this voice sounded so familiar. It belonged to the vampire named Morlock, one of Turel's eldest sons that I came to know ever during the time when I was still Kain's second-in-command. He was one of Turel's most loyal and favorite children who served him with such great devotion that it very often crossed the line of mere allegiance to a parent. But that was only until one day Morlock fell from Turel's grace by failing some task that his father and Master committed to him. As a punishment for this failure my brother condemned him to a confinement within some deep underground premises, where Morlock was ordered to eternally guard with his own life some 'ancient secret'. Nobody except for Turel and perhaps also Kain knew what this 'secret' was and where exactly it was located, and nobody really cared to know. So from then onward not a word was ever heard from Morlock and a once beloved son of one of the most prominent members of our dynasty was forgotten like a bad dream.

But now that I met Morlock here in these catacombs right beneath the shrine of the Tomb of the Sarafan much of this whole story became far clearer to me – it was here that Turel sent his disgraced son many eons ago to serve his eternal sentence.

And so I had found another acquaintance of mine from my previous vampire life that, however, was neither one of my blood siblings, nor my former Liege. This was an unlikely meeting, for none of us were supposed to survive up to this point - we were both subjected to penances that had to have become our bitter ends. But if my survival was only relative, since I was in fact resurrected with the help of some celestial forces which origins I still did not fully comprehend, then Morlock somehow managed to have miraculously stayed alive through all these centuries. How it was possible was beyond me, but regardless of this and all the grueling Turel gave to him Morlock still remained devoted and faithful to his father and Master, eager and ready to carry his humiliating burden even after eons of imprisonment in these underground premises. I knew better than anyone else what it was like to be brought up in the traditions of blind idolatry and adoration of your Lord and creator, but this kind of zealotry was pestilential even by these standards. The new knowledge of my past that I gained in the Tomb of the Sarafan had already made me change some of my former views and values, and now to watch somebody sinking so deep in the swamp of his own ignorance felt nothing short of pathetic.

"Such loyalty... to one who has you guarding this outpost like a chained dog?" I floutingly mocked the stalwart vampire. "Do you prosper on the scraps he casts you?"

The eyes of my brother's son seemed to have flared with wrath at that scoff of mine as he began to grimly inhale and exhale through his large nostrils.

"Your insults will do nothing to blunt the agonies of your demise!" Morlock snarled angrily in return and took several robust swings with his arms over the air, probably demonstrating his yearning to enter a combat with me.

"Kain killed me once - behold the result." I replied unimpressed, spreading out my arms in a bumptious provoking gesture. "I have no more to fear from you."

The atmosphere between us kept growing more and more heated as we continued to stare down each other with equally rampant attitudes. Morlock was the first rational vampire other than my brethren that I had met this far, and that was what was making the confrontation with him so unique. There was no personal malice I harbored for him like I did for Kain and my brethren, for he had no part in what they did to me. But this brief conversation with him showed that we still were on the hostile sides to each other. It was even ironic, for our sad destinies were very much alike: both of us once being the favored sons of our fathers and Masters, but then betrayed by them and subjected to the punishments we did not deserve.

The only difference was that unlike me Morlock still remained faithful to his creator, notwithstanding the ages spent in isolation and mortification. The bigotry had consumed him completely, having turned him into a tame slave that could not even see the depths of those lows he sank to.

Deep down inside I realized that Morlock bore no fault for this – he was simply misguided, led astray in his unflinching loyalty just like I was eons ago. Perchance he only needed the same enlightenment I had experienced recently to see how aberrant that fanaticism of his was…

But just as I even tried to concede such idea the voice of reason at once told me that that delusional myth would never become reality. Morlock had spent too much time being on the wrong track, having bogged down in that quicksand of barbarism too deep to be dragged out of it peacefully. If his own father's betrayal and centuries of torment and humiliation were not enough to open his eyes, then nothing else would ever be enough. His sole enlightenment could only be his demise. It pained me to admit that everything had to be this way, but the blasphemy I had uncovered in the Tomb of my former Order had deprived me of the last remains of compassion for the creatures I used to believe to be my congeners. Our entire kind was nothing but a cancerous tumor on the skin of this world, and death was the only thing that could cure it.

Finally Morlock spread his arms wide and threw his head back, giving another loud roar in a rabid display of overwhelming fury. It was not hard to guess that this was his way of challenging me to a fight, and though he was no arch enemy of mine I still felt eager to face him. Had this encounter happened before my visit to the Tomb I would have probably tried to avoid unnecessary violence, but after everything I had learned there I was not going to show mercy to any creature of the night anymore. The truth about how Kain created us had once again proven that vampirism was a curse – a curse that had to be destroyed at any earliest convenience. And Morlock was no exception. He might now have turned on me like my brethren did, but his mawkish devotion to Turel after everything he did to him had revolted and disgusted me, and now I was dying to take this disgust out on him.

When facing new opponents whose strength and abilities were not yet familiar to me, I usually preferred to leave the privilege of the first strike to them for the sake of watching this moment to study their battle style. But after having already skirmished Melchiah, Kain, Zephon and some other dangerous adversaries I could see nothing to beware of in Morlock. The Turelim might not have been as primitive as other vampire clans, which was evidenced by the fact that they alone managed to keep their conscious minds and their speech. But Morlock was still just an ordinary ghoul, and he could not be a greater threat compared to what I had already faced.

So for this once I was the first to start a brawl as I determinately took a jump over the moat, quarrying at the bat-eared vampire with the wraith blade in my hand swung for a hard blow.

Morlock, instead of trying to dodge or block my swoop, just shot forth his huge head and opened his jaws wide, shedding another bizarre growl of rage. Then all out of nowhere some barely discernable ball of transparent energy formed at the back of his roaring throat and his sharply-toothed jaws spewed it into me in the form of a beam-like projectile. The word 'projectile', however, was rather relative, for the glob of energy that was fired into me had neither color, nor contours – instead it looked a compression of air slabs, mysteriously taken out of the surrounding space and then channeled into one targeted air-stream.

Even despite the rashness of the moment I was still able to deduce that the source of such energy could only be telekinesis – the ability to manipulate space with the power of mind. All vampires were born with a measure of such skill, but now that I briefly refreshed my old memories I recollected that only Turel was the one to receive it in the form of his own Dark Gift, which allowed him and his descendants to cultivate it to the level far greater than what other clans knew. I should have indeed remembered that before jumping into the fight so frenziedly, and now I could pay a high price for my recklessness.

Upon putting all this together I quickly tried to redirect my body in mid-air to avoid the collision with the beam, but the invisible bolt of power hit me almost the very instant it left the Turelim's mouth, leaving me no fraction of a second to get out of its way. The impact was not hard, but it was enough to bring the whole momentum of mine to an abrupt halt and cause me to lose elevation in mid-air right above the moat I was jumping over. When it happened, my knocked down carcass just helplessly dropped from there all the way into the water beneath.

Once my flesh came into contact with the green sewerage liquid, the physical substance that held it together on the plane of reality was immediately destroyed and in less than a moment I found myself landing on the bottom of the recession with the world around me putting on its darker, more ominous spectral colors. The battle was over, and it was over no later than it began…

* * *

Just like before after falling through the floor of the Tomb's shrine I again continued to lie on the ground of the recession I touched down for some time, idly staring into nowhere through the insubstantial watery waste sprawling above me. The moat I dropped into wasn't deep, so getting back on the platform constituted no great chore.

But that was not what concerned me right now.

What did concern me was that I had just lost the fight in the most embarrassingly careless and imprudent way, and to digest the overwhelming shame that befell me as a result was taking quite an effort to put up with. Of course, as long as I was able to return to the spirit world, defeat on the plane of reality was not a fatal mistake. But regardless of this I still couldn't divest myself of the thought that if this had not been the case I would have already been destroyed. To attack an unknown opponent head on even if he was just an ordinary vampire certainly was a foolish move, and I should have at least attempted to remember what ability was the key feature of the Turelim before going into action with one of them. Apparently the rage that had accrued in me after all my recent revelations had caused me to grow negligent, making me forget that being immortal didn't make me invincible. Perhaps I needed to have made this error to remind myself that if I wanted to prevail in this war I had to always keep a cool head and rely not only on raw power, but on intellect as well.

As soon as I came to this simple conclusion I found the strengths to get over my blunder and returned to standing again, intent upon making my way back to the top.

Using one of the aisle walls as a rebounding surface I ran it up and fended off it to grab a hold of the edge of the platform over me. After getting on its surface area I again clapped my eyes upon the illusionary projection of the gyroscope-like artifact hovering in its center. The object was still there, intangible and ephemeral like before, and I still had no remotest idea what was the way of gaining access to it and whether such a way existed at all. For now my mind was all on my combat with Morlock anyway, so I had no desire to cudgel my brain over this mystery until I was through with that feud of mine.

So I just turned my steps to the other end of the platform, indifferently marching past the enigmatic artifact toward the portal. With no more souls around to feed on I would have to wait for my energy to restore by itself, which would take quite some time. This was an annoyingly tiresome prospect, but the one I couldn't do anything about, so once I got to the conduit I just sat on its halo and started pottering for the moment when I could shift back to the material realm.

Time went by, if such expression was appropriate here in the spectral realm, and as soon as I sensed my powers become fully refilled I stood up and willed myself to pass to the world of living. The ions swarming around the planar portal underneath me instantly enshrouded my astral frame, slowly filling it with matter like a jigsaw puzzle. Then the scenery around me began to change as well, and I felt the unfathomable interspatial barrier drag me back to where everything started.

My reincarnated physical form emerged almost before the very face of Morlock while he was still standing on the brink of the platform, mischievously peering into the water where he had dropped me just moments away. But since the interval between my drowning and re-emerging in the material realm was only a moment in this dimension, the disgraced son of Turel didn't have the opportunity to delve into his triumph too deep to not notice my sudden advent.

"What?! How did you…" he grumbled wide-mouthed, but I didn't let him finish his question as I again darted at him with violent vigor, using the moment of his stupor as an opening.

Morlock clearly expected this pounce of mine no more than he expected my return from hell, so he was barely able to dance out of my way, though still getting the peak of his left ear scalded by the sweep of the wraith blade. The massive brute sharply staggered back, grunting in pain, as I instantly tried to build the momentum and finish him off before he could recover.

Making a pushy step forward I aimed the Reaver for another blow, but then Morlock cut this comb of mine by catching the wrist of my right hand in mid-air and preventing the ghostly sword from coming down on him. This single grabbing move was enough to show how strong he was, and before I was able to break loose from this grip Morlock gave me a very hard punch in the face with the other hand.

The blow barged me right into one of the stone pillars that stood on this platform, despoiling me of my weapon and shading my eyes with the dimout of hard impact. I was surprised that Morlock hit me with his hand knuckled into a fist instead of unclenching his claws to bust me open and inflict on me more damage. Apparently he was just so confident of his superiority that he believed he could defeat me without even bringing out his full potential. This was an insulting allusion to decipher, but the irritation it gave me helped me come to my senses faster than usual.

When the mist in my eyes faded I saw the enraged Turelim vampire rabidly advance on me with both his taloned hands locked behind his neck for a hammering blow. Before he was able to squash me flat I nimbly slid aside, allowing his bony fists to crush into the platform's fundament and leave deep dents in it.

Upon eluding this charge I attempted to quickly return to my feet and change over to the offensive, but Morlock again opted for his Dark Gift ability by firing another bolt of telekinetic energy into me. Once more the projectile reached me so fast that I didn't have a ghost of a chance to avoid it, and my husk was sent flying all the way to the opposite corner of the platform. The blast didn't steal that much of my soul energy, but the son of my eldest brother still continued to dominate me, obtruding me the role of an underdog in this confrontation. I had to find a way to get out of this displeasing predicament and I had to do it quickly.

I landed mere feet away from the distant verge of the platform, scarcely refraining from falling into the water again. When I stood erect Morlock was already stampeding at me with berserk-like rampage, his right arm swung for a rough blow. Acting on pure instinct I sidestepped his lunge then momentarily went for a backlash, slashing the feral vampire across his neck with my talons.

Morlock reeled, but didn't slow down and immediately retaliated with another punching shot that nearly knocked me out cold. I again thudded on the ground with everything before my eyes going swimmy from the powerful blow, while Morlock finally decided to spread his talons wide and raven with them at me.

Calling on the buried reserves of my strengths I shot forth my own arms, catching the coming beast's hands on the fly and stopping them inches before the razor-like claws dug into my flesh.

Morlock bared his teeth with anger and started struggling with me, bestirring to bring the tips of his talons right up to my face. No matter how hard I was striving to pull his hands away, my strength was still no match for his and little by little the sharp points of his talons were drawing closer and closer to me.

When they almost reached my skin Morlock leaned with his face so close to mine that the saliva drooling from his mouth began to drip on my cowl.

"You are weak…" he growled through knife-edged teeth. "I have no idea how you survived the first time, but one way or another I _will_ send you to oblivion!"

"Even if I'm destined to go to oblivion again, this will not happen at the hands of such a mistake of nature like you…" I talked back to the Turelim and then briskly head-butted him right into his eerie pug-nosed snout.

Morlock jerked back with a loud bellow, almost losing balance, and then plucked with his hand at his ugly flat nose that began to shed a lot of blood. Though it was an insignificant injury by vampire standards, it still managed to distract his focus enough for me to finally seize the opportunity to turn the tables on him.

So I sprang back to my feet and rounded on the monster a squall of scathing strikes, starting to fiendishly smite every part of his body that I could reach. The new improved talons I gained from consuming the soul of Zephon easily tore massive chunks of flesh from Morlock's well-built torso, forcing him to defensively move back from me and bawl in anguish.

I kept on assailing fiercely and forcefully, trying to wound him to the point of complete unconsciousness when he would be in no condition to oppose my onslaught and I would be able to deliver to him a finishing blow. But the disfavored son of Turel would not stay down even after such a brutal series of attacks and still managed to wave me aside with a swipe of his huge arm.

I tumbled on the floor, getting another slight daze, while Morlock took his time to get a short breather, bearing the pain from the numerous bleeding hacks and gashes I left on his body. As I wheeled on after falling, Morlock glanced at me again, his nose still bleeding after the head-butt I gave him. Blood was flowing right into his mouth and he seemed to be enjoying it as he curled his red toothed jaws into a sick sadistic smile.

"That almost hurt…" he clowned and then again opened his jaws wide to disgorge yet another projectile.

Once I saw a new ball of telekinetic energy begin to nucleate in his throat I yarely strafed away from where I stood before the projectile even left my enemy's mouth. As a result the fired bolt hit the fundament of the platform instead, blowing a small part of it into pieces.

After avoiding this blast I tried to quickly capitalize before Morlock could come up with another shot, but unfortunately for me he too didn't linger a second to start forming a new projectile in his gorge. While it did take a few seconds for the projectiles to take shape, which could be used as a good opportunity to deliver an attack, the problem was that the bolts of energy were too blistering and too well-aimed to be dodged once they were fired. This made it nearly impossible to approach him while he kept bursting these telekinetic rounds and continue fighting him in a close-in engagement.

The stalwart vampire continued to blitz me with a barrage of telekinetic blasts, as I kept on relentlessly evading them, at the same time trying to calculate the strategy of piercing my way through this vicious onslaught. The velitation with him had already deprived me of a lot of stamina and I knew that if I would keep going like that I would soon get shoved back to the world of the dead again. But to be vanquished by one of Turel's progeny for already the second time in a roll was outside my plans, so I continued to rack my intellect in an attempt to find means of blazing a trail through this wall of fire.

After another projectile exploded a couple of feet away from me and volleyed me with a shower of wrecked stones, a fresh idea suddenly visited my mind. The reason I couldn't come close to Morlock was because he was constantly keeping me at a respectful distance with his long-range attacks. Therefore the only way for me to reach him was to attack him in the very same fashion. Of course, I did not possess the gift of telekinesis like the one he had, but as I glimpsed at the slivered stone fragments scattered about me I realized I could use some improvised means to reproduce such effect.

With this new plan fixed in my mind I picked up the largest piece of debris within my range and hurriedly jumped aside from where I stood to sheer away from another bolt of compressed air that Morlock sent into me in the following instant. After the blast missed me I at once availed myself of the pause the feral vampire had to take to make a new projectile and violently threw the stone right into his bat-eared muzzle.

Before the bolt of energy could have escaped his jaws the cast wreckage literally hammered out Morlock's face, smashing his already broken nose anew and knocking out several teeth from his mouth. The Turelim gave a heart-rending wail and started gagging and snuffling on blood, again covering his battered snout with his palm.

Seeing that my trick worked I hastened to jump at the chance and rushed into the ghoul with all the impetuosity I could muster, intending to shove him off the platform right into the gnawing water of the moat. But Morlock again remained steady to the bitter end and still managed to withstand the takedown I applied on him, allowing me only to drop him on the brink of the platform with both of us falling down together mere feet away from the recession of the moat.

We started wrestling, vehemently trying to push each other into the sewage, until he slammed his knee into my chest, forcing me to release my grip on him.

I bounded several feet backwards, feeling the depletion of my soul energy gradually becoming critical, while Morlock took another break to fetch wind, obviously prostrated by the traumas he had absorbed. The regeneration ability of a vampire could help the wounds heal fast, but the expended strengths could only be replenished through feeding. And with an opponent like me it was not possible. Morlock was slowly running out of stamina… but so was I too.

Eventually the muscled Turelim managed to struggle back to his feet, although visibly straining with his every move and breathing hard. Some of his wounds had already closed by the moment, but some were still profusely steaming blood, making him leave quite a gory puddle under his feet.

When he saw that I was still down after his last shot he diligently grabbed the largest boulder-like piece of debris lying by his side that had split off the platform after one of his telekinetic attacks and began to stumble with it toward me. His strengths were evidently fading as he was carrying that spall with notable effort, but his persistence seemed to be still just as strong as before.

As he finally came close to my body he swung the huge stone over his head and addressed himself to me,

"I must admit I was mistaken about you…" he croaked with tiny drops of blood flying out of his mouth. "You _are_ a worthy adversary… It's even too bad I have to destroy you…"

With these words his strong arms violently came down, toppling on me the stone in one hard crushing move. Having neither time, nor enough energy to escape it I did the only thing that was left for me to do and sharply brought forth my hands straight toward the coming wreckage. The newly augmented claws of mine easily plunged into the massive piece of debris and brought it to a halt before it managed to flatten me out.

"I think not, Morlock." I returned coldly and started assiduously trying to stand up under the weight of pressure that the Turelim was forcing on me.

The feral vampire widened his red pupilless eyes in utter shock, either because I was able to withstand his seemingly sure assault or because I knew his name. Once he came round from it, he quickly tried to press on and squeeze the stone through my countervailing, but I didn't let this duel of strengths continue any further and kicked Morlock with my foot into the gut, making him quit hold of the wreckage.

The stalwart ghoul shrank back, while I promptly took advantage of his disorientation and smashed the snatched-out stone against his bat-like head before he was able to come up with any attacking move. The spall went to pieces from the collision with the beast's solid cranium, but it still did its part and cracked Morlock's skull open.

The Turelim moaned and then limply dropped to his knees, the fracture in his head at once getting poured in blood, which started amply flowing all over his face. His eyes at once lost every bit of focus and just stared at me glazed with very little signs of consciousness left in them, while his body began to feebly waver left and right as if he was drunk. This last blow had truly knocked Morlock senseless, and now he was at my mercy.

Once I realized that I stood tall over his defenseless body and spoke to him,

"I too must admit that you're a decent fighter. Now then, let us see if you can swim just as well as you can fight."

With that I grabbed the kneeling vampire by the throat with my left hand and by his crotch with my right one, then with the use of whatever power was still left in me lifted his whole bulk over my head. Morlock made some weak attempts to break free from my grip, but in his barely conscious state he could do little to hinder me, so I just carried him unceremoniously to the edge of the platform.

When I approached the surface of the moat at last I made the final effort and tossed forward the ghoul's body with all the force that I had. Morlock's weighty carcass bumped hard right against the opposite wall then collapsed all the way down into the water beneath. There was a loud sound of splash, accompanied by the monster's agonizing roar, and then his muscular body was fully engulfed by the baneful greenish sewerage.

The chamber filled with the spluttering noise of flesh being scalded by liquid as Morlock began to squatter in endless pain and scream vainly, unwillingly slurping the very water that was now burning every single inch of him both outside and inside. White halo of dissolving fire surrounded his convulsing body, slowly starting to turn his skin and flesh to disfeatured decomposing meat. The entire world around him was now drowned in torment, and that torment was becoming him. His death had come, and it was about to take him away forever.

I stood on the brink of the chamber's base perfectly still, dispassionately watching Morlock dying in agony with some cruel-hearted contentment. There was nothing personal I held against him, and yet, I just couldn't help relishing his demise as if I had dismantled a dire enemy of mine. It was a strange notion to comprehend, for even when I slew Melchiah and Zephon who truly bore the fault for my downfall I always felt the burden of guilt and remorse coming down heavily on my shoulders. But now all I could feel was only some cynical derision – a total disregard to the life of my brother's scion that was not even implicated in betraying me. I understood that this feeling was wrong, but I was unable to make myself feel the other way. The knowledge of my true Sarafan heritage had changed me, and now I no longer saw things in their old light. I was not sure whether it was a positive shift or not, but I no longer cared.

My hatred had embraced me completely, and I had embraced it in return.


End file.
